Peter Clenott

"Moving and brave." —People Set against the wide open beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a wise, big hearted novel in which a young single mother and her ten-year-old daughter stand up to the trials of rural poverty and find the community they need in order to survive. Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter Skye have always been each other's everything. The pair live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need? One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and, without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly it feels like the independence that has defined them is a liability. And when a dangerous incident threatens to separate them, Laurel and Skye must forever choose--will they leave the place they love and the hardscrabble life they've built to move closer to civilization, or risk everything to embrace the emptiness and wildness that has defined them? What follows is an uplifting, profoundly moving story about a mother and daughter fighting for each other, against all odds, as they learn to build community and foster the resilience that will keep them alive.