QUICKSAND POND

A summer beside Quicksand Pond on Rhode Island’s coast transforms a reluctant 12-year-old white girl.

When Jessie arrives at her family’s rental cottage, she’s in “a separatist mood.” Immediately drawn to the pond, Jessie’s content to stand, “breathing in the place, listening and watching.” Discovering an abandoned raft, Jessie explores on her own until she encounters Terri, also white, a local outcast with an abusive, dead-end father. Bonding quickly, Jessie and Terri spend quiet days on the raft. Terri tells Jessie about the boys who disappeared in the pond and the family murdered years before whose surviving child, Henrietta, is now an elderly woman still living in the big house by the pond. Indeed, Henrietta stealthily watches Terri and Jessie using the raft she built as a child. When Terri’s suspected of stealing Jessie’s father’s laptop, Jessie adamantly defends her friend, but after Terri’s blamed for setting a fire in Henrietta’s garage, where the girls had borrowed some tools to repair the raft, Jessie’s support for Terri wavers. Unfolding slowly in simple, quiet prose, this sensitive, compelling story alternates between Jessie’s present experiences and Henrietta’s befuddled memories until they collide in a disturbing, pivotal climax.

A suspenseful, realistic, finely crafted story exploring friendship, trust, and how we judge others.