“Kinder Falls is home to generations of folks who might consider their lives to be ordinary. Yet in Lake Song, their beautifully told stories are overflowing with delicious details and breathtaking revelations about love, family, grief, desire, regret, revenge, and every other facet of what it means to be fractured and human. This book dazzles and surprises, from page to page and decade to decade over the course of these finely wrought characters’ lives.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“Like the glittering lakes, rivers, and waterfalls that surge through this remarkable work, Lake Song pulses with beauty, danger, and long-hidden secrets. These linked stories are masterful and moving, and I am in awe of the vibrant, delightfully cohesive, and absolutely real world Lesley Bannatyne has created in this tour de force.” —Daphne Kalotay, author of The Archivists
The linked stories of Lake Song, set in the fictional town of Kinder Falls in New York’s Finger Lakes region, span decades to plumb the complexities, violence, and compassion of small-town life as the twentieth century hurtles forward. Against a backdrop of historical events—bootlegging, Klan attacks, gold smuggling, the Albany Ketchup Murders, the 1965 Northeast blackout—a generations-long mystery unwinds. In 1906 Mavis Staunch drowns in Okisee Lake days after she refuses to sell her land to a trio of brothers. The same night, one of the brothers, Angus Epps, doesn’t come home. Few suspect the two events are connected, and no one imagines the role that a ten-year-old boy, a canoe, and a pack of coyotes play in the tragedies. Spiritualists, grifters, sugar makers, arsonists, seekers, and saleswomen wind through each other’s lives and across decades to add layers of resonance to each captivating story. The mercurial lake that unites the people of Kinder Falls sustains as much as it haunts, both witness and diary.
Lesley Pratt Bannatyne is the author of the short story collection Unaccustomed to Grace as well as fiction and essays in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and many literary magazines. Her latest nonfiction book, Halloween Nation, was a Bram Stoker Award finalist. Lake Song is her seventh book.
Photo credit: Gary Duehr
Contents
I. Burned Over
Coaxing Sugar from the Trees
A Ten-Year-Old Boy
The Stone House
My Sixth Toe
Galen, On the Clyde River
II. Staying Birds, Leaving Birds
Red Sails in the Sunset
Twenty Golden Eagles
Prince of Worms
Le Chevalier
Prescribed Burns
Avon Calling
III. The Children of Kinder Falls
The Edge
Her Mother’s Life
The Hill Queen
If Eli
You’ll Float
Everything Wants to Be
Fourth of July
IV. Lake Song
The Room at the End of the Hall
The Final Girl
Lake Layers
Six of Swords
Acknowledgments
