A Winter Garden: A Novel

The sequel to XENOS...After falling in love with Greece, and with a vacationing Dutch girl named Alarice, Doran Seeger elects not to resume his former life in the United States when Alarice is forced to return to the Netherlands at the end of a glorious summer. Instead he drifts from one European city to another until he eventually lands in the newly-liberated Czech Republic. There he befriends an enterprising Colombian girl who helps him establish himself as an underground art dealer importing paintings from Russia into Western Europe. Doran’s life in Prague is interesting and his job is both lucrative and a bit daring. He has made friends in the Prague artistic underground as well as in high political office, and indeed it seems that at last he has found himself after 10 years of rambling. Until one night he returns home to find the sister of his former lover camped on his doorstep. During the past 10 years Gisella Van Zyle, Alarice’s sister, has led her own diverse life, and now she, too, is anxious to settle into a more secure situation. But of course it’s never that simple. Over the course of a few weeks, including an art-buying trip to the City of Kiev where the couple is brutally mugged, Gisella persuades her sister’s former lover to return with her to Corfu. Of course all is not as it was 10 years ago. What consequences await both Doran and Gisella as they settle into a new life on the Island of Corfu? Perhaps a romance of their own? Or something else entirely?