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Description
For readers of Tell Me Everything and Heartwood, Where the Water Meets the Sky is the story of a brave young woman seeking wholeness and love in the untamed forests of Michigan’s upper peninsula—and answers about a fire that took away everything.
On a night in January, on the Garden Peninsula of Michigan, a farmhouse burns to the ground. A young child makes it out and flees into the woods
with a book of matches in her hand.
Ten years later, Abby, a lover of birds and the natural world, returns to Garden, to the woods and lakes and farms and fisheries of her childhood, to assist her uncle on an environmental study of trees. Her best friend, Brew, invites her to a party where she meets a troubled girl named Seda, on the run from her abusive ex. Abby sets out to protect Seda and introduces her to an abandoned cabin that becomes a sanctuary for them both. Here, Abby begins to process her unrequited feelings for Brew while also discovering the person she is becoming. She wants more for her life, a hunger both spiritual and physical, and seeks to understand the trauma of her childhood that took her mother from her. Abby cares deeply for the people and flora and fauna around her and identifies with the wounds of the environment. She is desperate to remember what happened the night of the fire and as the summer of 1996 unfolds, Abby will be forced to reckon with the truth.
Perfect for fans of the lush and tender nature writing of Helen Macdonald and Richard Powers, Where the Water Meets the Sky is a coming-of-age novel that expertly delves into the connection between our perception of ourselves and our natural environs. It is a paean to the vast and beautiful wildscape around us and to the power of community and the wisdom of love.
On a night in January, on the Garden Peninsula of Michigan, a farmhouse burns to the ground. A young child makes it out and flees into the woods
From the bestselling author of Haven Point comes a sweeping historical novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on the rocky Maine coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, and Sarah Blake.
1900: 28-year-old Anna Bradley spends summer days supervising three little girls, including her niece, Julia Demarest, on an island off the coast of Haven Point, Maine. There, the girls run free, pretending to be all the things society says they cannot: pirates and rum runners, treasure hunters and Roughriders.
A college graduate determined to remain unmarried, Anna is eager to establish herself independently. Inspired by the summer antics of Julia and her friends, Anna writes "Liberty Island"—a depiction of girls unshackled from the domestic sphere—under a pen name. Young readers are rhapsodic, and it is a runaway bestseller, but it’s not well received by the society matrons in her sister’s circle, who believe that books for girls should prepare them for their future as wives and mothers.
With "Liberty Island" growing in popularity, Anna’s secret is in peril, and when she’s suddenly thrown together with the former object of her affections, she must rethink everything she thought she knew about independence, marriage, and her dreams for her future.
1922: 29-year-old Julia Demarest was once proud of her aunt’s "Liberty Island" books. But as new, bohemian ideas take hold amongst her peers, she has come to see them as quaint, at best. In hindsight, her childhood summers on the island seem like more of an exile than a liberation, and her Boston Brahmin family—particularly her mother, Elizabeth Demarest—like relics of an unlamented past.
But in an effort to break free of expectations, she has ended up alienated from her family and heartbroken when a romantic entanglement with a free-spirited intellectual ends badly. When Elizabeth urgently calls her back to Haven Point, Julia is confronted by all the things she's been trying to escape, and forced to reconsider what truly brings her happiness.
A sweeping saga set in the first tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, Liberty Island is an ode to mothers and daughters, love, friendship, and the ways in which women define freedom on their own terms.
1900: 28-year-old Anna Bradley spends summer days supervising three little girls, including her niece, Julia Demarest, on an island off the coast of Haven Point, Maine. There, the girls run free, pretending to be all the things society says they cannot: pirates and rum runners, treasure hunters and Roughriders.
A college graduate determined to remain unmarried, Anna is eager to establish herself independently. Inspired by the summer antics of Julia and her friends, Anna writes "Liberty Island"—a depiction of girls unshackled from the domestic sphere—under a pen name. Young readers are rhapsodic, and it is a runaway bestseller, but it’s not well received by the society matrons in her sister’s circle, who believe that books for girls should prepare them for their future as wives and mothers.
With "Liberty Island" growing in popularity, Anna’s secret is in peril, and when she’s suddenly thrown together with the former object of her affections, she must rethink everything she thought she knew about independence, marriage, and her dreams for her future.
1922: 29-year-old Julia Demarest was once proud of her aunt’s "Liberty Island" books. But as new, bohemian ideas take hold amongst her peers, she has come to see them as quaint, at best. In hindsight, her childhood summers on the island seem like more of an exile than a liberation, and her Boston Brahmin family—particularly her mother, Elizabeth Demarest—like relics of an unlamented past.
But in an effort to break free of expectations, she has ended up alienated from her family and heartbroken when a romantic entanglement with a free-spirited intellectual ends badly. When Elizabeth urgently calls her back to Haven Point, Julia is confronted by all the things she's been trying to escape, and forced to reconsider what truly brings her happiness.
A sweeping saga set in the first tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, Liberty Island is an ode to mothers and daughters, love, friendship, and the ways in which women define freedom on their own terms.
Ten years later, Abby, a lover of birds and the natural world, returns to Garden, to the woods and lakes and farms and fisheries of her childhood, to assist her uncle on an environmental study of trees. Her best friend, Brew, invites her to a party where she meets a troubled girl named Seda, on the run from her abusive ex. Abby sets out to protect Seda and introduces her to an abandoned cabin that becomes a sanctuary for them both. Here, Abby begins to process her unrequited feelings for Brew while also discovering the person she is becoming. She wants more for her life, a hunger both spiritual and physical, and seeks to understand the trauma of her childhood that took her mother from her. Abby cares deeply for the people and flora and fauna around her and identifies with the wounds of the environment. She is desperate to remember what happened the night of the fire and as the summer of 1996 unfolds, Abby will be forced to reckon with the truth.
Perfect for fans of the lush and tender nature writing of Helen Macdonald and Richard Powers, Where the Water Meets the Sky is a coming-of-age novel that expertly delves into the connection between our perception of ourselves and our natural environs. It is a paean to the vast and beautiful wildscape around us and to the power of community and the wisdom of love.