Passersthrough
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A father and his estranged daughter reconnect to try to understand a decades-old trauma in this haunting novel, part ghost story, part lyrical exploration of family, aging, and how we remember the past.
At age 11, Helen disappeared in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park while camping with her father, Benjamin. She was gone for almost a week before being discovered and returned to her family. It is now 25 years later, and after more than two decades of estrangement, Helen and Benjamin reconnect at his home in Portland, Oregon, to try to understand what happened during the days she was gone. Meanwhile, Benjamin meets an odd pair, a woman and boy who seem driven to help him learn more about Helen’s disappearance and send him on a journey that will lead to a murder house, uncanny possession, and a bone-filled body of water known as Sad Clown Lake, a lake “that could only be found by getting lost, that was never in the same place twice.”
Passersthrough is a haunted, starkly lyrical novel set on the border between life and death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rock (The Night Swimmers) offers an eerie account of the attempted reconciliation between an estranged father and daughter. Benjamin Hanson, 76, gets a visit from 36-year-old Helen, who wants to rebuild a relationship with him and begins by installing a recording device in his house. What follows is a mix of transcribed recordings of their conversations, which take place remotely while she stays in a motel, visiting him in Portland, Ore., from San Mateo, Calif. Benjamin chafes at the technology but acquiesces to use the fax machine, and she faxes him a message expressing a desire to understand a traumatic event from her childhood. When Helen was 11, she disappeared from the foot of Mt. Rainier. Gone for a week, her "misadventure" was never fully explained. Things get weird and complicated when a group who might be a family of ghosts shows up at Benjamin's house. The family's unnamed boy and girl suggest Benjamin hike to Sad Clown Lake. Rock draws on the mountain scenery to create a surreal atmosphere, culminating in a haunting scene of disaster. The result is an otherwise conventional family conflict that convincingly morphs into something genuinely bizarre.
