Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river--the same messy,
cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for
years. But here her spirit swirls and stays . . .
Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house
she left thirteen years ago--with no heating apart from a fire she can't
light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to
drive, and no company apart from her own young daughter, Pepper. She
wants to clear out Pearl's house so she can leave and not look back.
Pepper has grown used to following her restless mother from place to
place, but this house, with its faded photographs, its boxes of cameras,
and its stuffed jackdaw, is something new. Fascinated by the scattering
of people she meets, by the river that unfurls through the valley, and
by the strange old woman who sits on the bank with her feet in the cold,
coppery water, Pepper doesn't know why anyone would ever want to leave.
As the first frosts of autumn herald the coming of a long winter and
Pepper and Ada find themselves entangled with the life of the valley,
with new companions who won't be closed out, each will discover the ways
that places can take root inside us, bind us together, and become us.
