The Dhow House

This is an interesting but somewhat disappointing novel from McNeil, who has won PRISM International awards for her fiction and nonfiction. The contemporary story begins as Rebecca Laurelson takes time off from her job as a field surgeon in East Africa and goes to stay with her aunt and cousins, whom she barely knows, in an unnamed country, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. They are white Africans whose wealth and privilege distance them from the black majority. During this extended visit, Rebecca begins a relationship with her much younger cousin, Storm. The family starts to understand that the unrest elsewhere in the country will not leave them unaffected, but tragedy strikes before they can depart. Nothing is quite as it seems; Rebecca is not just an innocent, altruistic medic, and it turns out to be no accident that she was posted to her family’s country. McNeil excels at descriptions of the landscape and wildlife, but in the early sections of the book, with little else to give the story ballast, that aspect feels overdone. The book keeps circling around the same points with little forward movement of either characters or plot. The novel’s second half gathers momentum and draws readers in, but both the relationships and the intrigue remain underdeveloped. Agent: Veronique Baxter, David Hingham and Associates. (Mar.)