Showing Loving Ways by Maurice Gee

May, David, and Alan Macpherson have the same father but different mothers, and their paths in life have been enormously different. The three have come together after 35 years at the Nelson orchard of their dying father, Robert Macpherson. The old tugmaster, domineering and earthy still, is being nursed by May's daughter, Heather, who also runs the orchard. A strange love exists between her and the old man.

As summer runs into autumn and the apples are harvested, the desires and beliefs of the ill-matched siblings - each, in some way, loving or loved - are frustrated, satisfied, put to the test until, at last, a shocking act of violence brings their unlikely reunion to an end.

In Loving Ways the award-winning Maurice Gee returns to the familiar territory of Nelson. Not even the main characters themselves are fully aware of the strange undercurrents which stir this superb contemporary novel. This is Gee at his finest.