More Than Sorrow

July 2, 2012
Twin tales sit awkwardly beside one another in this story of a Canadian farmhouse with secrets to tell from Delaney (Among the Departed). Hannah Manning, who’s recovering at her sister’s farm in Prince Edward County, Ont., from a brain injury incurred as a reporter in Afghanistan, starts having blackouts whenever she goes into the root cellar. During the blackouts, Hannah has visions of a previous resident, Maggie Macgregor, whose life degenerated into poverty and servitude after her Loyalist husband was killed during the American Revolution. Meanwhile, Hannah begins to take walks with Hila Popalzai, an Afghan woman who bears scars of war but never speaks of her past. When Hila is murdered, the police insist that Hannah knows more about the crime than she does. The modern-day suspense plot resolves with a satisfyingly tense scene that brings the two strands subtly together, but otherwise the historical section, despite its related themes, might as well be a separate book.