Confusing the Seasons

Einar William Coates can hear his wife in the steps that creak and windows that shake against the autumn wind. He can smell her on his pillow and in the kitchen—but he can never touch her again. As his family assembles at his home in northern Maine for her funeral, Einar knows this is a fate he has earned, yet the bitterness of loss is no softer for it.

He is hardly the only Coates man to be grieving, however, as one of his sons endures the loss of his marriage and the other mourns what should have been the start of his own. When Jason and Robert assemble at their childhood home, a grudge that dates back to the origins of Robert's mysterious limp and Jason's days as a hockey player at the university becomes their companion during the chill of the early winter.

Yet the struggles of the Coates family only distract them from a confrontation that played out years before. Old friends and older enemies reemerge from behind the darkened woods and empty potato fields of the desolate north as convicted murderer Angus McCausland returns for a fiery reunion with Jason Coates…

A story about regaining hope, remembering love, and sacrificing everything in that pursuit, Confusing the Seasons follows the Coates men on a winter bound to guide them toward self-discovery—or self-destruction.