Hawthorn, Volume Three: The Ones Who Decide (The Hawthorn Quartet, #3)

Hawthorn House has stood empty for fifteen months. Now its displaced residents are being asked to decide what replaces it. The proposal promises safer homes, accessible design and a right to return.

But the vote raises harder questions: who qualifies as a resident, whose voice counts, and what does a collective decision allow anyone to decide for somebody else? Nathan Price is asked to certify a list he knows is incomplete. Tia Morgan is recognised as affected by the fire but excluded from the ballot.

Pam Carter must separate supporting the new development from choosing whether she and her son will ever return. And Debbie Fielding discovers that an offer concerning her laundry may compromise the authority others have already assigned her.

As deadlines tighten and private interests become public, Hawthorn's residents must confront the difference between consultation and consent, representation and power, a mandate and a claim to speak for everyone. The Ones Who Decide is a sharply observed literary novel about housing, disability, community and the personal cost of collective decisions.

It is Book Three of The Hawthorn Trilogy .