WHERE THE WATER MEETS THE SKY

Summer on Michigan’s idyllic Garden Peninsula brings healing for a young woman haunted by tragedy.

The novel opens with a child running from a burning farmhouse as her mother perishes inside. Ten years later, Abby returns to the area, a rural part of Michigan, to help her uncle Dennis with his ecological research mapping the woods. The summer proves a time of reconnection as Abby visits with her Nonna, her aunts, and Brew, the cousin by marriage she’s loved since childhood. As Brew prepares to go to college, Abby is stuck in the past. She has little recollection of the night of the fire but she’s ravaged by guilt that she may have started the blaze, since she was found that night holding a book of matches. Early in the summer, Abby meets a local girl named Seda and the two become inseparable despite their clashing personalities: Abby is a quiet observer, deeply nourished by the natural world, while Seda is unpredictable and just a little bit of trouble—Abby worries she may be responsible for some recent campsite robberies. Abby and Seda find an abandoned cottage that once belonged to an artist and naturalist, and they retreat there over the summer, as Abby begins to remember more from the night of the fire. The novel abounds in descriptions of the natural world and bravely asserts a slow, meditative narrative pace. The land, and the animals on it, become central characters in the story, effecting change in Abby as she confronts some uncomfortable realities. Less successful is a surprising reveal toward the end that belies believability and negates some of the other beautifully wrought passages. Nevertheless, there is much to admire in this tale of resilience wrought from connection to the land.

Devotion to the natural world intensifies this tale of memory and forgiveness.