Acqua Sacra — Keith Henderson

Everything seems broken in Suzanna Ricci's life. Only 42, her marriage to Len has disintegrated. Her relationship to their teenage boys, Robin and Logan, is in need of repair. Now her mother, 'that martial soul,' wants her to restore the family home in Acqua Sacra, damaged by earthquake. And she doesn't care how many trips from Montreal to their vivid Italian patria of Abruzzo her daughter has to make.

At least when Len, a dodgy accountant, encourages her to take a job with a Montreal law firm headed by a man named Robert Bliss, Suzanna feels hopeful of being freer of her ex. Until she realizes the crazy cost of disentangling herself, and not just from him or his 'associates.'

Old World skepticism kicks at New World concerns in Acqua Sacra, Keith Henderson's brisk new novel about private deception and public corruption. His cast includes an honest architect, a gutsy office clerk, the modern-day witch of a drained lake, and at least one (reformed) dirt-digging lawyer. But what is Suzanna to do when the mob and their extra-legal cross-border political shenanigans invade her life? While Montreal's underworld seems as full of venomous snakes and mean dogs as the Abruzzo mountains, Roman history, Italian mafiosi, dutiful Canadians and migrant African workers collide, headline and bizarrely comedic. At the center of the crash, stunned and sheep-like lies Suzanna.

Henderson, the author of The Roof Walkers, again delivers an entertaining and perceptive story in Acqua Sacra about the nature of personal responsibility, this time in an age of multinational delinquency. If Suzanna survives the wreckage, it'll be by honouring the true meaning of 'family' in any global village.