First published 2013
Duro spots an unusual sight in his Croatian village of Gost: a car with foreign plates. The occupants turn out to be Laura, a British woman, and her two children who have bought a local house as their summer retreat. Duro offers to help repair their water system and soon becomes their daily handyman and Laura's confidant. The other villagers react with suspicion and hostility to these outsiders. When Duro and Laura's daughter Grace begin uncovering and restoring a mosaic that someone had plastered over, the work threatens to expose secrets from the War of Independence that the town has tried to bury. Duro finds himself caught between protecting the family he has grown close to and concealing his own connection to the house's previous owners. As tensions rise in Gost, the village's buried truths grow harder to contain.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Croatia, Gost
Period: 20th-century
294 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing
Content warnings: war