The Sparkle of Fish in Sky-Blue Water

Anthem Waller is living her best life in the small fictional town of Barclay, West Virginia. She had a complicated beginning to her life, losing her parents to violence and despair while still too young to know, being adopted by the town and her recently arrived uncle. Forty years later, married but childless, she is content in the relaxed pace of her 'bump on a knob.'

And then a stranger arrives. He has been traveling for forty years in search of merchandise stolen from a German Jewelers Collective. The theft was not reported to the authorities but assigned to agents to find. Eden Chase is one of the original and only one of two to still be on the hunt. He arrives in Barclay convinced that this is either the x-marks-the-spot he has been searching for so long. Or, perhaps, Barclay might be where this charade ends.

The story begins with Anthem recounting how she and Eden disrupted Barclay forever for the better. Now retired in a converted turn-of-the-century resort, she wants to fill in the blanks and set the record straight.

In the book's second part, we are introduced to Sabine's story as told to her daughter, Ilse. Ilse is the thief's daughter and has been estranged from her birth mother for forty years. Sabine also wants to set the record straight, as her health is falling.

And lastly, we learn about the pond, the angling discourse published centuries before, the clues embedded within its text, the unlikely partnership Anthem and Mr. Chase form in pursuit of what was stolen, not only from those jewelers so many years before, but also from them as a result.

All crimes are absurd. In this instance, the wrong created meaningless trouble, generated an equally absurdist and quixotic search, and tore asunder the lives of everyone touched by the crime.

It's a love story, and a story where love is lost, where isolation is broken, and friendships were unexpectedly forged. Oh, and there are fish!