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A Good Neighborhood

A Novel

Audiobook
11 of 12 copies available
11 of 12 copies available

"A feast of a read... I finished A Good Neighborhood in a single sitting. Yes, it's that good." —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light
In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who's headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans—an apparently traditional family with new money and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter—raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace.
With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.
A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today—what does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don't see eye to eye?—as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending love in a story that's as provocative as it is powerful.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

"While Faulkner's story veers off into the traditional grotesquerie of Southern Gothic literature, Fowler's culminates with injustices that are painfully easy to imagine because they continue to be a part of our contemporary lived experience." — Washington Post

"A timely story about what happens when we fail to consider how our actions affect others and the tragedy that can befall us if we can't coexist with those whose values are different from our own." — Atlanta Journal

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 18, 2019
      Fowler’s fascinating follow-up to 2018’s A Well-Behaved Woman chronicles the animosity generated between two families that leads to a tragedy in the suburban North Carolina
      neighborhood of Oak Knoll. Before local TV celebrity Brad Whitman, who is white, moves in, black single mother and ecologist Valerie Alston-Holt already has a poor opinion of him, as the house he is having built compromises an oak tree on Valerie’s property. She grows even more wary upon learning that Brad’s 17-year-old step-daughter Juniper took a purity vow. None of this deters Valerie’s son, Xavier, a gifted musician and honors student who’s headed to college in the fall, from pursuing her Juniper. A particularly ugly side of Brad emerges once Valerie sues him and his builder for damage to the tree: he doesn’t understand her genuine concern for the ecosystem and makes a number of racist and misogynistic remarks to her. Brad sees an opportunity for revenge when he catches Juniper and Xavier in an intimate moment and later uses his connections to a prosecutor and spins the truth to trump up charges against Xavier. The plot is skillfully executed, delving into each character’s complexities fully enough that their choices make perfect sense. This page-turner delivers a thoughtful exploration of prejudice, preconceived notions, and what it means to be innocent in the age of an opportunistic media. 350,000-copy announced first printing.

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  • English

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Check out what's being checked out right now This project is made possible by CW MARS member libraries, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.