The Good Neighbour - Tapa dura

The Good Neighbour effortlessly weaves together the tragic stories of two families, hauntingly linked by whispers across the centuries. When Colt and Francie Hart stumble upon an empty, 150-year-old house during a weekend drive in the country, each of them falls in love and wants to buy it - for entirely different reasons. For Colt, the house will become a trophy to his enormous success at trading stocks. For Francie, a blocked poet, the house seems to offer a chance for her to reawaken her creativity. Yet the more the Harts learn about the house, its history and its previous inhabitants, the more it drives them apart. When they meet their new neighbour, a descendant of the house's original owners, they inadvertently start a war over Colt's plan to move the family cemetery off their property. Colt returns to the city, leaving Francie to deal with the angry neighbour, but the consequences of his actions follow him there - while at the same time old secrets of his own resurface, forcing him to confront his family -- and himself. Events that conspire to destroy their marriage could just as easily bring them together again, in this story of two people who, in looking for a place to call home, find themselves instead.

William Kowalski is the author of Eddie's Bastard, winner of South Africa's Exclusive Books Ama-Boeke Prize; Somewhere South Of Here; and The Adventures Of Flash Jackson, all published by Black Swan. Born in Ohio and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, he now lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and daughter.