When Tim Ecott's family uprooted from Northern Ireland in 1977 they thought they were leaving behind their troubled lives, including the physical threat to Tim's father's life posed by the IRA. This memoir is not only about growing up penniless in South Africa during apartheid, but also a story about family and what holds them together.

When Tim Ecott's family uprooted from Northern Ireland in 1977, they thought they were leaving behind their troubled lives, including the physical threat to Tim's father's life posed by the IRA. They hoped to exchange a hum-drum suburban existence of mortgage debts and small-town society for sunshine and servants in an ex-pat African setting. But, just six months after arriving in Johannesburg they were bankrupt, evicted from their home, and had most of their possessions confiscated by the bailiffs. Whilst friends and relatives in Britain imagined that they were living privileged lives, Tim Ecott and his family often went hungry. Forced to survive on their wits, the family entered a twilight world where their true friends were prostitutes, thieves and renegades. Stealing Water is about family, and what holds them together; it is the story of how the worst of times can become the most important and valuable period of a person's life.