The Long-Shining Waters

Grey Rabbit, an Ojibwe woman living by Lake Superior in 1622, is a mother and wife whose dream-life has taken on fearful dimensions. As she struggles to understand “what she is shown at night,” her psyche and her world edge toward irreversible change. In 1902, Berit and Gunnar, a Norwegian fishing couple, also live on the lake. Berit is unable to conceive, and the lake anchors her isolated life and tests the limits of her endurance and spirit. And in 2000, when Nora, a seasoned bar owner, loses her job and is faced with an open-ended future, she is drawn reluctantly into a road trip around the great lake.

The Long-Shining Waters is the story of these three women, separated by years and circumstance but connected across time by a shared geography: the inland sea. Rich with historical detail, and precise in its mapping of the human heart, each character in this luminous and haunting debut comes vividly to life and will stay with the reader long after the story is finished.