Margo's Café - Paperback

by Tom Milton (Author)

Margo Walsh, an elderly widow who lives with a daughter and a granddaughter in the house where she grew up, is struggling to pay property taxes that keep increasing because people with a lot of money are moving to her village from the city and bidding up prices of homes. With the influx of these wealthy people the village is becoming unaffordable for working-class people. Margo, who lives mainly on Social Security, has been able to supplement her income with what she earns from a café that she started five years ago. Her café is open from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon offering takeout, breakfast, and lunch, and until now its profits have helped pay her property taxes. But her new landlord, an investor from the city, is doubling her rent, so she faces the risk of losing her business and being forced to sell her house. Of course her house has risen in value, but she would have to share the proceeds of a sale with her siblings, so she wouldn't get enough money to buy or rent an apartment with the space she needs for her family in the area where she has lived her whole life. To save her house she must either find a job, which will be difficult for a woman her age, or expand her business by offering dinner in the evening, which will be risky. And while she is struggling to survive she must also deal with the problems of her children and her grandchildren.