This is a historical literary fiction family saga. Light on the mystery and very few thrills, but I still liked it. Just too long and a little too commentary-driven for my tastes. 

 

Energy: Assertive. Critical. Incisive.  

Scene: 🇺🇸 Camp Emerson in upstate New York near the Adirondacks in the 1950s and 1970s. 

Perspectives (7): A camp counsellor. A new camper reluctantly attending camp in the wake of their parents’ divorce. The landowner’s spouse grieving the past. The landowner’s preteen eager to attend camp for their first time. A worker for the landowner’s family. A newly minted detective investigating the disappearance of a camper.  

Timelines (2): 1950s showing how the landowner’s family came to establish the camp and how the parents met. 1960s showing how a family tragedy occurred. 1970s before and after another camper goes missing. 

 

🐺 Growls: Too long. Overly drawn out with lots of filler. Felt like two whole novels mashed together. Increasingly convoluted storylines with rapid time jumping instead of a more linear two- or three-part storyline. 

🐕 Howls: Same themes/commentary repeatedly mentioned just from slightly different angles. 1950s storyline was all sadness and how terrible it was to be a woman. Lack of historical vibes (didn’t get much of a feel for it being 1950s, ‘70s etc beyond how women were treated). 

🐩 Tail Wags: Interesting plot for the 1975 timeline. Barbara and Tracy. Chapters that took place at camp. Dynamics between camp counsellors/campers. 

 

Take notes! So many characters and takes a good chunk of the way into the book to get to know them all. 

 

Audio narration was good, but this may be a text read. Easy to multi-task but hard to know which time period we’re in since some characters are part of all of them. 

 

🤓 Reader Role: Third person narrator telling us the story and introducing us to characters and their circumstances. We know more than any one character except for where Barbara is and what happened to Bear.  

🗺️ World-Building: Camp map!!! I love it. Descriptive for the surroundings and environment, but historical atmosphere lacking. 

🔥 Fuel: What happened to the landowner’s child? Where is Brenda? Is she safe? Who was she meeting at night? What did she want to attend camp so badly? Why was a counsellor betrayed and will they be able to prove their innocence? 

📖 Cred: Realistic with a touch of suspended disbelief 

 

Lake breezes. Wooden cabins. Screen doors. Campers laughing. Soft crying. Campfires. Day old alcohol. Cigars. Sunlight on calm waters. Distant guitar chords. Old fire engine. Tires on gravel. 

 

Content Heads-Up: Parental distancing, ghosting (as preteen). Cigarettes, chewing tobacco. Loss of a child. Grief, pills. Generational trauma. Patriarchy (family, relationships, systemic/workplace). Forced gender roles and expectations. Alcohol (social, self-medicating). Alcoholic parent. Controlling, verbally abusive spouse. False accusation, police interrogation. Missing child (preteen). Drugs, drug use (off page; cannabis, cocaine). Injury/wound, blood. Animal death (squirrel, hunting). Mental illness. Homophobia (character comments, opinions).

 

Rep: Dutch- and Polish-American. American. Diverse body types. Freckled and pale skin tones. Cisgender. Heterosexual.

 

📚 Format: Library Audio