It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away—while tending bar in New Orleans—Vale receives a call saying that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her. But the hometown that Vale comes back to is not the one she left eight years earlier, and she finds herself falling back into the lives of the family she thought she’d long since left behind. Vale’s search becomes intertwined with the stories of three generations of women—a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, an owl-loving hermit—as they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses. All the while, Vale unwittingly careens toward a family secret more stunning than she ever imagined.

In this evocative first novel, Robin MacArthur crafts an arresting story about coming home, finding hope in the dark, and the power of the land to connect and to heal. Heart Spring Mountain is a captivating exploration of the small fractures that make families break—and the lasting ties that bind them together.