Cormorant Lake
A Novel
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
On a cold November night, Evelyn Van Pelt steals her roommate’s two underfed and neglected little girls from their beds and drives to the northwestern hometown she fled fourteen years earlier—Cormorant Lake. There, hidden in the mountains and woods, dense with fog and the cold of winter, Evelyn grapples with the guilt of what she’s done, and as she attempts to reconcile her wild independence with the responsibilities of parenthood, she reconnects with the two women who raised her—her foster mother, Nan, and her biological mother, Jubilee. But by coming home, she has set in motion a series of events that will revive the decades-old tragedy that haunts Cormorant Lake—and lead her to confront the high cost of protecting her secret.
At once fantastical and deeply rooted in the natural world, Faith Merino’s deeply affecting and spirited debut novel explores the shape of family, the enduring bonds of friendship, and the imperfections of motherhood—messy and beautiful, instinctive and learned, temporal but permanently life-altering.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Merino's contrived, mystical debut, a 30-something woman abducts a pair of young neglected children. Evelyn Van Pelt discovers her roommate Erin has abandoned her toddler daughter, Mora, in their Riverside, Calif., bathtub. Horrified, Evelyn takes Mora and Mora's older sister, Lila, to stay with Nan, the woman who raised her, in Cormorant Lake, Wash. Evelyn admits her crime to Nan, explaining that Erin would frequently disappear, so much so that the girls started calling Evelyn "mama." At Nan's, Evelyn tries to stifle feelings of guilt over taking Erin's children, but it manifests in unsettling moments that make her believe Erin is nearby, manipulating nature. Then Nan starts leaving the girls unsupervised while Evelyn is away at one of her two menial jobs, and the reader learns Nan is communing with the ghost of Clare, a girl Nan had grown up with. Months later, Evelyn's long-absent mother, Jubilee, shows up and moves in with them, and the four attempt to carve out a makeshift family while Evelyn and Nan remain haunted in their own ways. While the prose is a bit overwrought and full of oblique metaphors about wayward mothers, the author builds tension around the uncertain outcome of Evelyn's rash decision to take the children and Nan's increasingly dangerous interactions with Clare's ghost. Still, this slight story fails to cohere.
