Overview

When Celia is murdered by a troubled young man from across the street, her husband Henry and daughters Nora and Lucy are left to navigate the unthinkable in their small town of Kittery, Maine. Desperate to help his daughters heal, Henry sends the girls to spend the summer at Skyland Farm, a remote artists' retreat in the New Hampshire mountains run by his beloved cousin Franny. But the girls, feeling abandoned, struggle to find their footing among the resident artists. Nora grapples with her complicated feelings about Blake, the young man who destroyed their lives, while forming a new bond with a young sculptor. Lucy, the sole witness to the murder, retreats into silence and the mysterious world of a painting above her bed. Back in Maine, Henry battles his own grief and faces his greatest test when he becomes entangled with Blake's alcoholic mother, threatening his twelve years of sobriety. As the family struggles separately with their trauma, the buried details of that terrible day slowly surface. When Nora makes a desperate midnight drive home to confront her father, their journey becomes a reckoning that will either destroy what remains of their family or finally allow them to face their loss together. Set against the rugged beauty of coastal Maine and the mountainous landscape of New Hampshire, Skyland reveals how art, nature, and unexpected friendships can slowly guide us back from the brink--and how families can find their way to one another even after the unthinkable.

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9781952143908

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Reviews

""How do we respond when the unthinkable happens? Skyland thrums with provocative questions about obsession, art, loss, and the debts we owe one another--offering a rare and thrilling mix of suspense and sensitivity. Each of the beautifully-drawn characters in this novel has an urgent story to tell, fueled by a desperate desire to make sense of the world. Vividly rooted in its New England setting, Skyland is a page-turner with heart."" --Lewis Robinson, author of The Islanders ""I simply adored Ann Williams' latest, Skyland. Out of one family's devastation and darkness comes a hard won New England light. It doesn't come easy, nothing in this novel comes easy, which is why it is ultimately so rewarding. A book you carry around with you after you've finished because it still provides comfort."" --Peter Orner, author of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter ""An achingly lovely novel about what happens when an act of violence tears apart a family. Skyland shows us that we may be able to find our way back from the unthinkable--slowly and painfully, to be sure, but not without moments of beauty."" --Ann Packer, author of Some Bright Nowhere ""In the aftermath of unimaginable horror, Henry Lavender and his two daughters, Nora and Lucy, teeter on the knife-edge of sanity, flirting with dark impulses, as they try to process their new lives. The journey forward is also a journey back, an attempt to understand a shattering moment of violence. Alive to the redemptive beauty of the natural world, which is gloriously described by author Ann Joslin Williams, Skyland is ultimately about observation and correct interpretation. It suggests (and demonstrates) that accurate perception can be a salve, whether one's viewing art, the environment, one's life, or other people's hearts."" --Debra Spark, author of Discipline

Author Information

Ann Joslin Williams is the author of the novel Down From Cascom Mountain, and a collection of linked short stories The Woman in the Woods. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, the New Hampshire Writers' Project Literary Awards, and the Stegner Program at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in many journals including The Sun, Carve, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. When she's not teaching in Durham, she spends time in Alexandria, New Hampshire at her family cabin, hiking in the White Mountains and enjoying the outdoors with her partner John.

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