The Stranger's Homecoming: A House in the Alto Minho, Portugal

A traveller from another continent crosses the Minho River from Spain for the first time and arrives in northern Portugal.Enchanted by the Alto Minho region, he determines to make a home for himself there.Aged sixty-five, with a long career as a journalist in war-torn Israel and having recently lost a bitter legal battle with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he finds sanctuary on the edge of Europe, where a river meets the Atlantic. Igal Sarna buys a dilapidated village house and with a local architect and craftsmen begins renovations.Months of tribulations are interspersed with the joy of transforming a near ruin, with its overgrown land and cowshed, into a comfortable home.He makes friends along the way and is readily accepted as an exile by a kind and generous cast of neighbours and fellow foreigners.Spurred on by journalistic instinct, meanwhile, he begins to explore the history of both house and region, untangling the intrigues behind his new home and his adopted community.In a country s