Keith Henderson

Everything seems broken in Suzanna Ricci's life. Only 42, her marriage to Len has disintegrated. Her relationship to their teenage boys, Robin and Logan, is in need of repair. Now her mother, 'that martial soul,' wants to restore the family home in AcquaSacra, damaged by earthquake. Her daughter has to make. At least when Len, a dodgy accountant, encouraged by Robert Bliss, Suzanna feels hopeful of being a freer of her ex. Until she realizes the crazy cost of disentangling herself, and not just from him or his 'associates.' Old World skepticism kicks at New World concerns in AcquaSacra, Keith Henderson's brisk new novel about private deception and public corruption. His cast includes an honest architect, a gutsy office clerk, the modern-day witch of a drained lake, and at least one (reformed) dirt-digging lawyer. But what is Suzanna to do when the mob and their extra-legal cross-border political shenanigans invade her life? While Montreal's underworld seems as full of venomous snakes and mean dogs as the Abruzzo mountains, Roman history, Italian mafia, dutiful Canadians, and migrant African workers collide, headlong and bizarrely comedic. At the center of the crash, stunned and sheep-like, lies Suzanna. Henderson, the author of The Roof Walkers, again delivers an entertaining and perceptive story in AcquaSacra about the nature of personal responsibility, this time in an age of multinational delinquency. If Suzanna survives the wreckage, it will be by honoring the true meaning of 'family' in any global village.

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