A change of climate Book

What happens to a family when they allow the bigger world and especially its injustices into their lives. The timeline of this novel shifts back and forth. It begins in the present when husband Ralph Elsted is director of a religious charitable trust and his wife Anna has a weak heart. Quickly we are plunged back into the past when Ralph is at war with his puritanical and dogmatic father. To escape Ralph accepts a post in a church-funded mission house in a South African township. This is 1955 when the apartheid government has passed a law forbidding education to black children. Ralph and Anna quickly get into trouble with the South African authorities. This section of the novel is particularly accomplished. Eventually they are arrested and then deported to a remote corner of the world - Bechuanaland. It's here that Ralph and Anna undergo the pivotal moment of their lives (Mantel does a fabulous job of withholding this mystery at the same time as creating bags of tension around it).
I was fully invested in this beautifully written and constructed novel from start to end. To my mind, along with Ali Smith, Hilary Mantel is the best living female British novelist.