by Kim Harrison
First published 2013
Clive, a sixty-year-old art history professor, returns reluctantly to his family's Michigan farmhouse to see his aging mother. The divorced academic has failed as an artist and struggles with his declining years. Back in familiar surroundings, something stirs within him. He reconnects with his high school sweetheart and reaches out to his estranged daughter. His dormant passion for painting awakens. In the second novella, a farm boy from Michigan's Upper Peninsula feels an overwhelming pull toward water. He sees strange creatures beneath the surface that others cannot. As the pressures of growing up mount around him, the young man answers the water's call. He enters the river and lets it carry him across the vast expanse of Lake Michigan. Both stories explore men at crossroads, searching for meaning and connection in a world that has left them adrift.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, novella, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: crossroads, estranged-family, reconnection, second-chance
Setting: Lake Michigan, Michigan, Michigan's Upper Peninsula
Period: contemporary
240 pages · Hardcover · Grove Press