THE RESTLESS LAKE

A young woman with suspicions hides her own truth in Fink’s romantic thriller.

Olivia Vandenberg is the manager of the Stehekin Wilderness Ranch, which is nestled along the coasts of Lake Chelan in Washington state. She has been working there for the past three years after a bad break-up (and an eventually identified “bad thing”) sent her in search of a change from her job in computer tech. When she meets Luka Novak, the new ranch hand hired on as the kayaking instructor and grounds electrician, Olivia has some reservations about the handsome Croatian (“I wondered what I would see behind those glass-green eyes if I were closer”). A month later, Olivia meets two high school graduates who will work on the ranch over the summer before heading off to college in the fall: Greta Schneider as kitchen staff and Ingrid Norgaard as a stablehand. Over the course of the summer tourist season, each character must contend with the restlessness within their spirits and hearts. As a supervisor, Olivia must maintain a certain level of professional distance between herself and Luka, Ingrid, and Greta, but she becomes intrigued by Luka, despite her qualms. While it is no surprise that the two young ladies are eager for a summer romance, what transpires between Luka and Olivia forces each of them to confront the difficult parts of their pasts that they came to Stehekin to escape. The author makes the menacing mysteriousness that Olivia senses around Luka the meat of the story. Though she has Olivia implicate her own “overactive imagination” at the outset, there are no actions by Luka on the page that support her suspicions. Similarly, when their relationship takes a turn, Fink provides no clear signs of emotional progression—all is revealed in long outpourings of past history. However, the author shines when relating Luka’s story, which unflinchingly highlights the horrors of war.

A sometimes opaque tale about finding refuge in nature to make peace with a tumultuous past.