Harmony House

Mavis and Hilary, two widowed retirees in London, Ontario, decide that traditional retirement options aren't for them. Instead, they set out to design and build Harmony House, a purpose-built co-housing community shaped entirely around their own needs — and to find the right group of women to share it with.

As they assemble their household, Harmony House becomes a study in the practical and emotional realities of communal living: the friendships that form, the friction that inevitably surfaces between strangers learning to share a home, and the mutual protection and support that make the arrangement worthwhile. Ruth Hay treats co-housing, a real and growing trend, as more than a backdrop — the novel is as interested in how a group of older women renegotiate independence and companionship as it is in any single plot thread.

Harmony House launched Hay's Home Sweet Home series, which continues through Fantasy House, Remedy House and further installments following the same circle of women.