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.
Itβs August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles awayβwhile tending bar in New OrleansβVale 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 sheβd 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 womenβa farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, and an owl-loving hermitβas they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses. All the while, Valeβs search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.
Written with a striking sense of place,Β Heart Spring MountainΒ is an arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of the power of the landβand the stories it harborsβto connect and to heal.Β Itβs also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together.
Robin MacArthur lives and works on the farm where she was born in Vermont. She is the author of Half Wild: Stories (winner of the 2017 PEN/New England Award), the editor of Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology, and one-half of the indie-folk duo Red Heart the Ticker.