Leaning in the Wind

This gently comic novel effortlessly traces two decades of profound and unique relationships that span three continents. Edwin Parsler, a rising young lawyer and critically acclaimed poet, meets Lisa Muller, a bright and articulate teenager, while aboard a ship traveling from England to America in the 1950s. Lisa stays in America, but her shining image remains with Parsler as his muse when he settles in the English countryside to marry, raise a family and prosper. His neighbors in a nearby historic property ""Wood End'' (reputed to have Shakespearean connections) are Aston and Shirley Hart, who travel to and from East Africa where Hart eventually becomes an adviser to Idi Amin and is put under a malevolent Mau Mau curse. When Shirley dies, presumably as a result of the curse, Hart returns to Wood End with his precocious daughter Jo and ultimately marries Lisa, now a stunning and literate young woman who is ecstatic about living in a historic home. The Booker Prize-winning author of Something to Answer For has instilled in his sophisticated characters a sense of bemused displacement and an air of hesitancy that almost vanishes when they are all confronted with a series of crises. This is a story of fundamental human relationships, rendered with humor, sympathy and feeling. (March)