HEART-SIDE UP

A tightly focused and lightly peopled study, Dimmick’s second (after In the Presence of Horses, 1998) makes good use of a hardscrabble rural setting as a young woman fleeing trauma attack goes in search of the only man she ever loved.

Zoe is a learning-disabilities specialist at a New England college until a frustrated, knife-wielding student slashes her almost to death. Subsequent therapy and a generous settlement from the boy’s rich parents enable her to take a bold step: to locate her hometown boyfriend, Dayton, whom she hasn’t heard from since he dumped her eight years before to pursue his religious inclinations. Zoe tracks him to a remote town in northern Vermont, learns that he’s part of a radical Catholic community that refuses to acknowledge the authority of the Church, and decides on the spur of the moment to buy an unfinished house and hundreds of acres on a nearby hillside. As she becomes adept at handling a chainsaw to cut her winter wood supply and working on her house, Zoe also takes time to spy on Dayton and his community, trying to decide what she should do about him. Then, however, the gift of a big, woofy dog from her only neighbor (the town constable) lands Zoe in the midst of a long-simmering town feud. First, the guts of a deer are left in her driveway; then her house is ransacked and the dog’s tail hacked off. Zoe knows again the paralyzing fear she thought she had escaped, but, amazingly, from this brutal violation of her privacy comes the gift that will bring Dayton back to her.

Matters of the heart, spirit, and life on the land converge nicely here, but all the vitality in the story belongs to Zoe (and her dog), while the other characters just pass through like so many wisps of cloud.