Publishers Weekly
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Two women bond while staying on a remote mountain lake in Garvin’s touching if predictable latest (after The Music of Bees). Frankie, an ornithologist, is holed up in a small cabin in Washington State, unmoored by the sudden death of her father and her falling out with an adviser. Anne, a composer with writer’s block who’s on leave from the Seattle college where she teaches, is staying at her wealthy in-laws’ lake house with her nonspeaking five-year old son, Aiden. The two women forge a bond after Aiden, who is weary around most people, wanders into Frankie’s cabin and becomes fascinated with an injured baby crow she’s nursing back to health. In chapters told from alternating points of view, readers watch the women grow closer as each grapples with her personal problems. Though the various plot strands get tied up a bit too neatly, Garvin evocatively renders the beauty of the mountain landscape, and she excels at depicting the fault lines in her characters’ lives (“Nobody could tell you how to fix the errors in the composition of your singular family”). Readers in the mood for a happy ending will be carried away. Agents: Heather Carr and Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (Apr.)

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Ornithology grad student Frankie O’Neill retreats to her family’s remote lakeside cabin, seeking solitude and guidance in the aftermath of her father’s death and the abrupt dissolution of her studies. There are few cottages there, and most should be unoccupied, a fact Frankie knows since her father, Jack, was caretaker for those wealthy Seattle residents who “roughed it” for short summer respites. But Frankie’s reverie is shattered when a young couple arrives with their precocious son. She wants to keep her distance, but that becomes difficult once five-year-old Aiden runs away from his parents and takes refuge in Frankie’s cottage. Aiden’s recent behavioral difficulties have frustrated his family, and his mother, Irish ex-pat musician Anne, interprets Aiden’s silence and withdrawal as a rebuke for the emotional distance she imposed after her dearest friend’s death. When Frankie rescues an injured baby crow, the bird’s rehabilitation provides the catalyst for a journey of restoration for herself, Aiden, and Anne. With great compassion and keen appreciation, Garvin (The Music of Bees, 2021) gently applies the wisdom found in this simple act of caring to help a marriage mend, a friendship blossom, and a child heal. A stunning affirmation of nature’s power to soothe and rejuvenate.