October by Zoe Wicomb

A letter from her brother Jake calls Mercia back to Kliprand, the parched dorp she left for a life in Scotland years ago. Had she not been abandoned by her partner of twenty-four years, Mercia might never have returned to Namaqualand and its reminders of Meester - her stern and unforgiving father.

In Kliprand, she finds a broken Jake who has turned his back on his young son, wanting her to remove the boy to Scotland. But what secrets haunt this family, and what sense is there to make of this thorny place called home? Zoe Wicombs October is a moving family history and an incisive commentary on what it means to belong.