It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away, 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. As she 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.

Spanning nearly 40 years, the stories in Robin MacArthur’s debut give voice to the hopes, dreams, hungers and fears of a diverse cast of Vermonters --- adolescent girls, aging hippies, hardscrabble farmers, disconnected women and solitary men. Straddling the border between civilization and the wild, they all struggle to make sense of their loneliness and longings in the stark and often isolating enclaves they call home. Golden fields and white-veiled woods, dilapidated farmhouses and makeshift trailers, icy rivers and still lakes rouse the imagination, tether the heart and inhabit the soul.