The Retreaters by Sharlene Miller Brown (ABC Books)

At the Cottonwood Retreat, a wine-country resort, the live-in staff are known by the townsfolk as “Retreaters”, which they are.

There is thirty-ish Liv, who inexplicably lost her hearing when her aunt whom she was nursing, died. 

Evelyn, near seventy, always alone and grumpy, is now facing imminent retirement and physical decline.

And Jake, the lone and imaginative eight-year-old son of a cleaner, is missing his sister who drowned last year.

All have “retreated” from the outside world and we live in real time, through a period with them.

Each, dealing in their own way with their alone-ness, exposes us to love and loss and the hardships of life.

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