A tale both churlish and charming, in which Shelley House, a grand but dilapidated old mansion, is scheduled for demolition, forcing the residents to put aside their antagonism and fight the common enemy: the construction developer. Twenty-five year old Kat, of pink hair and punkish demeanor, has just rented a room in Shelley House and found a job as a dishwasher, convinced she’ll stay for just a couple of weeks. Why is she in town? It’s hard to say, except she partially grew up here with her loving grandfather, away from her substance-abusing mother, and something is drawing her back. Across the floor lives seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling, a retired teacher who spends her days like Dickens’s Madame Defarge, recording the goings on of her neighbors. Both Kat and Dorothy are propelled by powerful secrets that stretch back years, and that only now—thanks to the corrupt cops and a vicious construction developer—they must expose to the light of day. With poignant characters and a richly drawn community, this is a novel readers will not soon forget.
