Library of American Fiction

A Novel

Sara Rath

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780299215231
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

    In this first novel from award-winning writer Sara Rath, the forests and lakes of northern Wisconsin pose a daunting threat to outsider Hannah Swann, who is content with her quiet life in Madison, Wisconsin, where she teaches and writes screenplays about obscure nineteenth-century poets. Her relationship with her college-aged daughter is strained yet candid, and a long-standing affair with a married professor has its own peculiar ups and downs.
    When Hannah unexpectedly inherits her uncle's rundown resort, she must head to the northwoods to close up and sell the business. But the only interested buyer is Ingold, an international mining company, and Hannah finds herself reluctantly operating the resort while trapped in the midst of a treacherous dispute between Ingold and Uncle Hal's activist friends.
    From safeguarding the wilderness to pursuing elusive new love interests, Hannah has plenty to engage her imagination at Star Lake. A new aspect of her personality emerges, one that is surprisingly courageous and compassionate. Throughout this humorous, elegantly plotted adventure with its appealing characters and lyrical depictions of nature, Hannah encounters the inevitability of change—in herself and in the nostalgic landscape of the deep North.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• Here and There
• 1 Thank Your Lucky Stars
• 2 The Yank ’Em Inn
• 3 Zing, Creak, Bang
• 4 Choose a Star
• 5 Wetlands
• 6 The Last Resort
• 7 Keep Dancing
• 8 Gone Fishing
• 9 Full Moon
• 10 Unfamiliar Landscapes
• 11 The Canoe Flotilla
• 12 Call of the Wild
• 13 Ah, Wilderness
• 14 Dog Days of Summer
• 15 That Sinking Feeling
• 16 The Clambake Incident
• 17 Mine Games in Progress
• 18 October Finishing Touches
• 19 Flurries
• 20 Winter Storm Warning
• 21 Dark December Morning
• 22 Synchrony