In this evocative first novel, a young woman returns to her rural
Vermont hometown in the wake of a devastating storm to search for her
missing mother and unravel a powerful family secret
It's August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on
Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles
away--while tending bar in New Orleans--Vale receives a call and is told
that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long
estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look
for her.
Though the hometown Vale comes back to is not the one she left eight
years earlier, she finds herself falling back into the lives of the
family she thought she'd long since left behind. As Vale begins her
search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to
follow three generations of women--a farming widow, a back-to-the-land
dreamer, and an owl-loving hermit--as they seek love, bear children, and
absorb losses. All the while, Vale's search has her unwittingly
careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever
imagined.
Written with a striking sense of place, Heart Spring Mountain is an
arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of
the power of the land--and the stories it harbors--to connect and to
heal. It's also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can
make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together.
