Mistik Lake

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn't her great-aunt Gloria come to visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally's tragic car accident on a frozen lake in the winter of her own sixteenth year seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break.

Odella tries to hold her family together, but when her mother runs off, she's overwhelmed and confused. How can you claim to love your family, only to walk out the door and never come back?

Then Odella meets Jimmy Tomasson, whose dreams of prophetic flying fish seem to have led him to her. In the heat and tenderness of their deepening feelings, and in his belief in her, Odella begins to find the courage to love...and the strength to unravel the web of secrets that has ensnared them all.

This spare, lyrical novel, brilliantly narrated from multiple points of view, explores the lives of three generations of women within a family--revealing what happens when you don't have the courage to follow your own heart, and what can happen when you do.