House on Harbor Hill

Set in the past and present, The House on Harbor Hill is a murder mystery that tackles the issues of racial prejudice and spousal abuse in the lives of two very different women…

What the book is about

The House on Harbor Hill is the setting for the intersection of two women’s lives – Delilah, who is in the habit of taking in destitute women, intent on being a good person, despite the past sins that the voice in her head keeps reminding her of; the other is Tracey, who is escaping her husband and struggling to raise her children without his help, even if it puts her at the mercy of people she isn’t entirely sure she can trust.

Opening Line

When Tracey first saw the envelope taped to her front door – a four by six inch yellow square set against blue paint made gray by decades of unrelenting sun – she instantly thought it was an eviction notice.

What I thought

Nothing about this unassuming cover prepared me for the flight of Stratton’s characters off the pages or the depth of emotion this writing delivered. I enjoyed the way the author explored the difficult subject of domestic abuse from multiple perspectives through the experiences of very varied characters – the radial comparison provided fodder for a very interesting discussion. Her alternating timelines, but also the way she used the memories invoked by the mysterious voice that speaks to Delilah, and thus to the reader, proved informative and harsh, but was a great tool for revealing things the character herself might not have wanted to share. While some of the situations were a little cliche, like a woman in a supermarket not having enough money to pay and therefore, asking to put items back, which isn’t as typical as one might think since people who are counting their pennies, often calculate how much their groceries will cost before they get to the register, otherwise there wasn’t much wasted in these 353 pages and ultimately, even those awkward moments are forgiven as the characters endear themselves through their challenges and how they survive them.