Goodreads
synopsis: Bitter
winters are nothing new in Hatchet Inlet, hard up against the ridge
of the Laurentian Divide, but the advent of spring can’t thaw the
community’s collective grief, lingering since a senseless tragedy
the previous fall. What is different this year is what’s missing:
Rauri Paar, the last private landowner in the Reserve, whose annual
emergence from his remote iced-in islands marks the beginning of
spring and the promise of a kinder season.
The
town’s residents gather at the local diner and, amid talk of spring
weather, the latest gossip, roadkill, and the daily special, take
bets on when Rauri will appear—or imagine what happened to him
during the long and brutal winter. Retired union miner and widower
Alpo Lahti is about to wed the diner’s charming and lively
waitress, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri still unaccounted for,
celebration seems premature. Alpo’s son Pete struggles to find his
straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy
might be having second thoughts.
Weaving
in and out of each other’s reach, trying hard to do their best (all
the while wondering what that might be), the residents of this remote
town in all their sweetness and sorrow remind us once more of the
inescapable lurches of the heart and unexpected turns of our human
comedy.
Stats
for my copy:
Hardback, University of Minnesota Press, 2018.
How
acquired:
Won from BookishFirst
My
thoughts:
When I entered the raffle for this book I didn't realize it was the
second in a trilogy, but it definitely reads as a standalone and I
didn't feel I'd missed anything by not reading the first book first.
I
thought the book was going to more about Rauri Paar being missing and
the townsfolk trying to find him or find out what happened to him.
But the focus is actually on three other characters: Alpo, a widower
about to marry a woman twenty years younger than him; Sissy, his
bride to be; and his son, Pete, a divorced alcoholic in recovery.
Rauri is mentioned pretty often, as the locals speculate about him,
and Pete even borrows his dad's boat to make the treacherous journey
to Rauri's island to look for him.
But
this isn't Rauri's story. This is a wonderful character study of
Alpo, Sissy, and Pete. The author completely immerses us into each of
their lives. The writing is very evocative, especially the
descriptions of the weather and geography. When Pete makes that
journey to Rauri's island, I was completely mesmerized. I didn't want
the book to end.
Some
fiction books are novels, and some are literature, and in my mind the
two terms are not always interchangeable. LAURENTIAN DIVIDE is what I
consider literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment