Elaine Nell Orr, Dancing Woman, in conversation with Diane Chamberlain

It’s 1963, and Isabel Hammond, an expat accompanying her agriculture aid worker husband to Nigeria, is hoping to find inspiration for her art and her life. Then she meets charismatic local singer Bobby Tunde, and they share a night of passion that could upend everything. Seeking solace and distraction, she returns to her painting and her home in a rural town where she plants a lemon tree and unearths an ancient statue buried in her garden. She knows that the dancing female figure is not hers to keep, yet she is reluctant to give it up, and soon, she notices other changes that make her wonder what the dancing woman might portend.

Against the backdrop of political unrest in Nigeria, Isabel’s personal situation also becomes precarious. She finds herself in the center of a tide of suspicion, torn between the confines of her domestic life and the desire to immerse herself in her art and the culture that surrounds her. The expat society, the ancient Nigerian culture, her family, and even the statue hidden in a back room—each trouble and beguile Isabel. Amid all of this, can she finally become who she wants to be?

Elaine Neil Orr is the author of five books, including the novels “A Different Sun” and “Swimming Between Worlds.” Born and raised in Nigeria as the daughter of missionary parents, Orr’s work is deeply rooted in the landscapes of both the American South and the Nigerian South. She is a faculty member at North Carolina State University and at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, Spalding University.

Diane Chamberlain is the New York Times, USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling author of 27 novels published in more than twenty languages. Influenced by her former career as a social worker and psychotherapist, she writes suspenseful stories that touch both heart and mind.