Unsettled Ground
At 51 years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation. The rented cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the seemingly idyllic world they've created begins to fall apart. The cottage they love, and the security it offered, is taken back by their landlord, exposing the twins to harsh truths and even harsher realities. Seeing a new future, Julius becomes torn between the loyalty he feels toward Jeanie, who has a weak heart and a sheltered vision of the world, and his increasing desire for independence. Meanwhile, as Brexit threatens to irreversibly change the country, the local community begins to stir trouble for them both. In this harrowing novel, award-winning author Claire Fuller masterfully builds a tale of sacrifice and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized and remarkable people dig to uncover long-held family secrets, and in their own way, repair, recover, and begin again.