"I can't help feeling the lane where we lived had something to do with it all. As though these families had been put there for a reason. . . it was so still, like everyone was holding their breath a lot of the time."

Tom and Millie are best friends who live in a quiet lane on the edge of town and rely on each other to make sense of what's going on in their lives—especially Harry Mac's. Harry Mac, Tom's dad, is a man of silences and secrets. And now Tom is involved in one of those secrets. At school, Tom sits through lessons on the arms race and President Kennedy, waiting until he can be back on the lane, where life is far more interesting: why does a black car drive slowly up the lane every night? And what did Harry Mac mean when he wrote in his newspaper "people disappear in the night?" Set within a fascinating period of South African politics, this coming-of-age story is full of heart, soul, and hope, in the tradition of Jasper Jones and To Kill a Mockingbird.