"Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors. One is black, the other white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed, and are living with questions, disappointments, and secrets that have brought them shame. And each has something that the woman next door deeply desires. Sworn enemies, the two share a hedge and a deliberate hostility, which they maintain with a zeal that belies their age. But, one day,...

In 1993, white American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl was killed in a racially motivated attack near Cape Town after working to promote democracy and women's rights in South Africa. The ironic circumstances of her death generated enormous international publicity and yielded one of South Africa's most heralded stories of postapartheid reconciliation.