In an echo of the movie Dirty Dancing, Jill and her husband Kit met at a kids’ camp where they both had summer jobs. Although Jill is college-educated and a struggling documentary filmmaker and Kit is a fisherman like his ancestors before him, they aren’t as ill-matched as that might seem. Both grew up in small town Maine in humble homes and they share a deep love for the area. They have two teenaged sons. Charlie at seventeen is involved in his first serious relationship, while Sam is struggling with just about everything after his closest friend fell to his death in an accident two years earlier when he was just thirteen. Jill refers to her sons as “the wolves,” particularly as she has been a single parent while Kit is away in Nova Scotia for three months trying to make more money as fishing plays out in Maine. This stretches into an unknown separation when Kit is seriously injured when the boat’s motor explodes in Canadian waters and he is hospitalized a seven-hour drive away. This novel treats the family dynamics so well while bringing in the external concerns that also strain it, climate change and the slow death of independent fishing, and the presence and temptation of drugs in this rural and poor area. But primarily it is the story of Jill and Kit’s marriage. Well-done. 263 pp.
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