Hedges — Jo Barney

The time is 1970; the place is the postwar housing development, the small bungalows built for returning veterans and for shipyard workers. F0r first time in their lives, families had some money. They can afford a new house, two bedrooms, one bath, yards big enough to build a garage in. They begin again, this time without war. The neighborhood fills with working husbands and stay-at-home wives who have time to make friends over morning coffee and play tennis in the local park. The future looks good. But wars continue, not THAT war, but the one in Korea, then Vietnam, then the Middle East. When the first settlers move on, their old homes fill with new surges of veterans' families glad to have chances to begin again. Eleanor, white, meets her new neighbor, Patsy, black, through a break in the twenty year-old overgrown laurel hedge between their houses, planted by Eleanor's husband when they first moved in,. Different wars, different colors, different ages, similar struggles. Their lives entangle, like the limbs of the hedge between them. They have coffee, trim the hedge, begin a friendship that clears the path for hope and trust between the two women. Together they learn to deal with the unlucky hands thev have been dealt: war-scarred husbands, handicapped children, uncertain futures. When tragedy strikes, will they find solace in knowing they are sisters bound by blood?