Suffused with stark pathos, Margreete's Harbor begins with the image of a house burning on the coast, ash swirling in the snow like so many lost memories. Margreete's daughter, Liddie, moves her young family across the country to help care for her mother in what's left of her home. This breathtaking study of the human condition explores thwarted expectations, the truths we assume to be universal, and the interplay between our choices and our principles. Over the course of ten years, the family faces the growing political unrest of the 1960s, an increasingly senile matriarch, and other conflicts typical to familial growth. With special attention to interiority and landscape, this sincere, affecting novel is one I'll never forget.