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A couple begins an intense affair,
only to be separated abruptly -- and perhaps irrevocably --
in this surprising, suspenseful love story.
Zeke is twenty-nine, a man who looks like
a Raphael angel and who earns his living as a painter and
carpenter in London. He reads the world a little differently
from most people and has trouble with such ordinary activities
as lying, deciphering expressions, recognizing faces. Verona
is thirty-seven, confident, hot-tempered, a modestly successful
radio show host, unmarried, and seven months pregnant. When
the two meet in a house that Zeke is renovating, they fall
in love, only to be separated less than twenty-four hours
later when Verona leaves abruptly, without explanation, for
Boston.
Both Zeke and Verona, it turns out, have
complications in their lives, though not of a romantic kind.
Verona's involve her brother, Henry, who is tied up in shady
financial dealings. Zeke's father has had a heart attack and
his mother is threatening to run away with her lover, all
of which puts pressure on Zeke to take over the family grocery
business. And yet he finds himself following Verona to Boston.
As he pursues her, and she pursues Henry, both are forced
to ask the perplexing question: Can we ever know another person?
Margot Livesey is the
award-winning author of a story collection, Learning by Heart,
and of the novels Homework (0-312-42044-7), Criminals,
The Missing World, and Eva Moves the Furniture
(0-312-42103-6), which was a New York Times Notable
Book, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year,
and a PEN/Winship finalist. Born in Scotland, she currently
lives in the Boston area, where she is writer in residence
at Emerson College.
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