An Unsuitable Woman

Life has dealt journalist Deborah Morsey a challenging hand. The traumatic dealings with South Africa’s apartheid police, devastating betrayals and failed love affairs make her feel like a stranger in her own life. Dancing with Nick, a widowed sheep farmer, at a friend’s wedding, she begins to see a new future. After a whirlwind courtship, she accepts his proposal and embraces the idea of becoming a farmer’s wife as well as the stepmother to his daughter, Sara. Opening a small pre-school on their property for the farm workers’ children gives Deborah a renewed sense of purpose while the forgotten love letters she finds hidden in her grandmother’s desk rekindle her innate romanticism. But the uninvited flashbacks to her earlier life and the secrecy around the circumstances of Nick’s first wife’s death are unnerving, and the everyday with Sara and her father is not as uneventful as she’d hoped it would be. Deborah’s weekly visits to her cousin Abi in Grahamstown give her some respite from the farm until she is introduced to human rights lawyer Sanjay, who makes her question everything she thought she knew about love.

A bold exploration of love in all its confusing guises, An Unsuitable Woman is the much-awaited second novel from the author of Under the African Sun.