Where Are You Now?

Description

This is not the Garden of Eden, but it is my patch of heaven. Steal my apples. Come and get them.

When an asylum seeker is discovered sleeping rough at an allotment site, the plot-holders are alarmed and hostile. However, in secret, Walter begins to leave out food for Osama. Thus, a friendship begins on a garden bench, between a grieving widower and an asylum seeker on the run from the authorities.

Walter is rooted in his home city; Osama belongs nowhere. Walter has a safe and routine life; Osama’s life is uncertain, risky and vulnerable. Walter feels powerless to help him, while at the same time he struggles to understand his own daughters and their lives. Then, one day, Walter discovers Osama is not who he says he is…

Sarah Connell lives in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Her debut novel, Whenever, won the Cinnamon Novel Prize in 2017 and she is also the author of Random Three, published in 2020 by the Book Guild. Where Are You Now? is her third novel and was longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Prize ‘for women writers of literary merit and “unputdownability”’ in 2021.