Heart Spring Mountain

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 secretIts August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles awaywhile tending bar in New OrleansVale 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 shed 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 womena farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, and an owl-loving hermitas they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses. All the while, Vales 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 Mountainis an arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of the power of the landand the stories it harborsto connect and to heal.Its also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together.