A Cold Spring

From Booklist The equilibrium of a small Vermont town is skewed when the third house up the mountain, long empty, is occupied by a New York couple fleeing financial failure. Music teacher Nell Maye had loved the house she inherited from her grandparents, and her unemployed, unreliable husband (whom she calls Billy Mayebe) seeks a fresh start in the country. But the age and clutter of the house exhaust Nell, despite the help of neighbors: high school history teacher James Easter, who's instantly smitten with Nell, and widow Lenny Bingham and her grandson Jody, who was abused as a child and still doesn't speak at the age of 15. Then events occur during that cold spring that lead to loss, tragedy, and finally possibility. Ziesk's second novel (after Accepting Losses, 1996) is a marvel of economy, with its spare prose style and narrative that omits whatever isn't absolutely necessary, from quotation marks in dialogue to details of key events. Here suggestion suffices, creating a lovely, haunting novel. Michele LeberCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Product Description Deep in the Vermont mountains is a small town, rustic and isolated, with cold, clear streams and dense, green forests. It's a place that Nell Maye remembers fondly, where her grandparents lived and where she spent summer vacations as a child. A place where not much happens. But when Nell and her husband Billy decide to leave the mess of their lives in NYC for this peaceful New England town, they realize that it's not exactly as they imagined. Under the placid surface is a place simmering with tension. There's Lenny, who's been entrusted with the care of her mute grandson Jody because his father has physically abused and abandoned him. There's Eli, a widower struggling to raise his wild son, just barely under his control. There's James, the highschool geology teacher, longing for someone to change his life, unaware that all the highschool girls secretly adore him. There's the pack of high school boys, bored and always looking to score some alcohol and cigarettes. Enter Nell, the dreamy, vaguely unhappy music teacher and Billy, her manic husband, who bring their city ways and their fears of the country along with a host of further complications for everyone around them. James falls for Nell, Billy scorns the townspeople; and a high school boy, stockpiling small resentments, decides to take revenge. When the dust settles, one man is dead, two boys are banished from town, a marriage has fallen apart, andout of the ashesa new romance begins. A COLD SPRING is a story of the roads we see and the ones we don't, and of those moments when lives suddenly change direction. From Library Journal Despite some exquisite writing and a group of interesting characters, Ziesk's second novel (after Acceptable Losses) lacks a cohesive plot, reading more like sketches for several different novels than as a wellcrafted whole. Among the many characters whose lives intersect are Nell and her husband, Billy, who have left Manhattan and moved to Nell's grandparents' house in Vermont in an effort to shore up their failing marriage. Billy convinces Fernando to leave his demeaning job in Manhattan and move to Vermont to cook at Billy's planned Mexican restaurant in order to make enough money to bring his wife and family from Mexico. There's also the young widow Lenny, who works at a local plant nursery and raises her grandson, Jody, a silent, watchful boy whose fear of his abusive father is overcome only by his growing attraction to Annabelle Root. Annabelle's father, Eli, worries about his teenage son's increasingly problematic behavior, leading him to make a difficult decision. Is this a book about loneliness? Is it about relationships, abuse, racism, or love? Only the author knows, and she hasn't communicated her points well. For comprehensive fiction collections only. Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2001