The Hired Man

An award-winning Scottish and Sierra Leonean novelist “brilliantly portrays the atmosphere” of Croatia in this haunting tale of war, history, and secrets (The Guardian).
 
Visitors are not common in the small Croatian village of Gost, so Duro is surprised to see a strange car pull up to a well-known farmhouse just outside of town. Laura, a British woman, and her two children are refurbishing the home to be their summer cottage, and Duro agrees to lend a hand, becoming Laura’s confidant along the way. But the rest of the residents of Gost are not so pleased to have outsiders in their midst.
 
As Duro works to shield Laura and her family from the town’s hostility, volatile secrets begin to bubble to the surface—secrets that could threaten everyone in the seemingly sleepy town, even the unwitting new residents.
 
The Hired Man is a story of lost love, dangerous history, and quiet malice. “Not since Remains of the Day has an author so skillfully revealed the way history’s layers are invisible to all but it’s participants, who do what they must to survive” (The Boston Globe).