Many years ago (late 1990's) I was reading a friend's novel on a beach. I only read the first few pages before we left, and I never saw the book again. I'm hoping someone out there can help me identify the novel from a brief description of the start of the story:
It was set in the south of the US. It opened with an African American woman sitting in a house by herself, bemoaning the fact that her house was haunted - by what she wasn't sure. A man came to visit, walked into the house and, without any preliminaries, asked the woman how she could live in this house that was so obviously haunted by some tortured soul.
I remember it struck me that the presence of a haunted soul was just accepted - it wasn't a matter of 'can you feel it too?', it was just there.
Not much to go on, I know, but I'd be very grateful if anyone recognises this.
Peter