AND GIVE YOU PEACE by Jessica Treadway

FIC

TRE

This is a stunning and moving novel about a family's devastating loss and its aftermath. One summer morning Tom Dolan goes into the bedroom of his sleeping 15-year old daughter, shoots her in the head, and then shoots himself. His estranged wife Margaret, and younger daughter, Justine, respond with stupefied disbelief. The oldest daughter, Anastasia, is the only one who struggles above her own grief and shock to find the truth at the heart of the tragedy.

The author is masterful at depicting small-town life, familiar neighborhoods, the rhymes of family interplay. Especially genuine are the small ordinary words and actions that form the backdrop of earth-shattering events-cheerleaders' shouts ringing through a cemetery where the loved one's grave is newly dug. The author does not tie up all the loose ends or bestow redemption and resolution upon her characters. She leaves them damaged, but functioning and whole.

KNITTING CIRCLE by Ann Hood

FIC
HOOD
Mary Baxter loses her only child, little Stella.
In their grief Mary and her husband find themselves isolated and disconnected, even fromeach other. Mary’s mother encourages her daughter to go to Big Alice’s shop to learn to knit. At the knitting circle six ladies surround Mary: Scarlet, Lulu,Beth,Harriet, Ellen and Alice. Each member shares with Mary a new knitting technique, along with her own story of loss and recovery. Initially, Mary is reluctant to tell her story. Eventually hours of knitting and listening help her to relate her own experience of suffering. Soon Mary begins to reclaim her life and rediscovers a renewed love for her husband.

GRANGE HOUSE by Sarah Blake

FIC

BLA

Though Maisie has always spent her summers in Maine at Grange House, the summer of 1898, when Maisie is seventeen, is different. The girl's parents are pushing her toward marriage, and the owner of Grange House, Miss Grange, hopes Maisie will have the mysterious "gift." She tries to show Maisie some of the Grange family history, real or imagined.

A terrible accident, however, kills Maisie's father, prompting Maisie to write about him after she returns home. On receiving Maisie's biography of her father, Miss Grange sends Maisie her own diaries.

Only when Maisie and her mother return to Grange House can Maisie sort fact from fiction and learn who she herself is and who she wants to be. This very Victorian telling of Maisie's story should appeal to women and girls who enjoy a Gothic atmosphere, beautiful detailed writing, and complex characterization.

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG by Lisa Carey

FIC

CAREY

A very unusual book. Set on an isolated island off the Maine coast, this story weaves back and forth in time. Artist Oisin MacDara has retreated from the world since the suicide of his twin sister. Blessed (or cursed) with "the sight," he waits for her to appear to him as have so many others who have gone beyond.

Instead of Nieve, his sister, he is visited by Aisling, a little girls of six, a ghost from the Irish potato famine. Over a period of a year she lives with the begrudging Oisin and grows to full womanhood.

This story explores the unique connection between brothers and sisters, as well as the unearthly relationships between souls, separated by time, but united by their suffering.