Back Creek

Description

It's the summer of 1975. Eighteen-year-old Grace Barnett knows she should be preparing to leave for college in September. But a strange Memorial Day boating accident on the creek near her Virginia home -- she is the only witness to the apparent suicide -- kicks off a series of events that will define her family's future as well as her emerging view of life. On the very day of the victim's funeral, Grace's older sister, Lillian, absent from the family for the past five years, suddenly reappears. Unfortunately, it is also the day Grace's mother chooses to quietly walk out on her family, leaving Grace to act as the mediator between her prodigal sister and her badly wounded father. As the summer wears on, Grace finds herself thinking less about college and more about how to mend the rifts in her family. She turns to her neighbour, Cal, a recently returned Vietnam vet, to help sort through her problems. After weathering her sister's unexpected return and pregnancy, her father's budding alcoholism, and Cal's war-induced neurosis, Grace decides to set off to rural North Carolina with the intention of bringing her mother back home.

Back Creek is the first novel written by Leslie Goetsch, a graduate of Duke and Johns Hopkins universities, and English department chair at an independent girls' school in Baltimore (Roland Park Country Day). Although she currently lives in Baltimore with her husband and two children, she's a native of Virginia, having grown up in an area much like Back Creek, one of hundreds of deep tributaries that cut through the state. Awarded a Maryland State Arts Council grant to develop Back Creek, she's now at work on her second bookwhat she calls a "coming-of-middle-age novel."