Alison Archer

Zebras in London Alison Archer

As a rebellious teenager, Yvonne Grayling burnt her grandmother Lana's house to the ground. Five years later, and still wracked with guilt, Yvonne goes to London to replace the only irreplaceable item lost in the fire: a rubbing of a brass gravestone given to Lana during World War II by her first love. In "Zebras In London," Yvonne's quest to make things right evolves into an effort to reunite her grandmother with that lover, forty years after they last saw each other. But reconnecting them means restoring the other broken families entangled with her own. At the book's emotional core are the bonds Yvonne forms with a colorful cast of British and American women, as she discovers that you can't make everyone's problems right, and that sometimes you can't avoid choosing sides.