Vacationland

On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge--only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather's care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water," much as the linked stories of "Vacationland" cast shimmering spells across distance and time.

On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge--only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather's care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water," much as the linked stories of "Vacationland" cast shimmering spells across distance and time.

Those whose paths have crossed at Naledi inhabit "Vacationland" a man from nearby Hatchet Inlet who knew Meg back when, a Sarajevo refugee sponsored by two parishes who can't afford "their own refugee," aged sisters traveling to fulfill a fateful pact once made at the resort, a philandering ad man, a lonely Ojibwe stonemason, and a haiku-spouting girl rescued from a bog.

Sarah Stonich, whose work has been described as "unexpected and moving" by the "Chicago Tribune "and "a well-paced feast" by the "Los Angeles Times," weaves these tales of love and loss, heartbreak and redemption into a rich novel of interconnected and disjointed lives. "Vacationland" is a moving portrait of a place--at once timeless and of the moment, composed of conflicting dreams and shared experience--and of the woman bound to it by legacy and sometimes longing, but not necessarily by choice.