For his second novel, The Honey Locust, Dalhousie grad Jeffrey Round delivers an elegantly written and suspenseful saga of love and war, demonstrating that sometimes the quieter conflicts closer to home are the hardest to overcome. It’s 1995 and photojournalist Angela Thomas has been sent to cover the Bosnian war, an event now recognized as one of the most horrific in our lifetime. As a journalist, Angela’s job is to dispassionately observe events, but here she finds herself emotionally drawn to another photographer, Andre. In a parallel storyline, the Thomas family meets at its country home in beautiful Bruce Peninsula, where years of betrayals and tension rise to the surface. Though it’s clear that this story must end in tragedy, it’s the quieter moments of realized redemption and forgiveness where Round most succeeds.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
