A beautifully written book about a naïve young girl, Natalie, who believes her family to be the envy of their neighbours. However when a stranger enters the family’s midst his influence on her will shatter the family causing a separation of decades. A great debut very much in the style of Anne Tyler and Anita Shreve.
Growing up on a dairy farm in the mountains of British Columbia in the 1960s, three kilometres north of the American border, Natalie Ward knew little of the outside world. But she had her family. A family so close and loving that Natalie believed they were the envy of the nearby town of Wakefield - particularly her eldest brother Boyer, whom Natalie held especially close to her heart.
But Natalie began to question her family's idyllic existence the summer she turned fifteen.
The arrival of a soft-spoken stranger, an American draft-dodger called River, would test the morals and beliefs of the family and the community to breaking point. The series of events following that summer day would leave relationships shattered and the Ward family changed forever.
