In this follow-up to Bowring’s debut The Road to Dalton readers return to her titular Northern Maine town five years after the events of the first novel, with the suicide of Bridget Frazier still sending ripples outward. Dr. Haskell is lost in a cloud of guilt. Bridget’s mother Annette is lost in booze and shopping away the pain. Nate Theroux and Bridget’s daughter Sophie is now five years old, full of joy, but also full of difficult questions. Bev Theroux and Trudy Haskell are still united privately, even as the fallout from Bridget’s death has challenged them both. And some folk who have been away are back. Greg Fortin has finished his first year of college at Orono and is back for the summer working at his father’s hardware store, albeit reluctantly. Similarly, Vera Curtis, home to tend to her mother’s broken leg, contends with returning to small town life, after spending years in Bangor as an ER nurse. Over the long, hot summer of Where the Forest Meets the River, the people of Dalton come and go in a wave of returns and departures, large and small, figurative and literal, as they sort out what it means to be home.
Readers who enjoyed Bowring’s first novel will happily slip back into her rhythmic prose and will slip back into time with her spot-on depiction of small town Maine in 1995. And they will fall back into easy friendship with her characters, each of whom Bowring tends with palpable love and a generosity of spirit. A contemplative trip back to Dalton awaits—one which will leave readers eager for the conclusion of her trilogy due out next year.
-Laurel, Reference
