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Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter Skye have always been each other’s everything. The pair live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel’s patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need?

One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and, without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly it feels like the independence that has defined them is a liability. And when a dangerous incident threatens to separate them, Laurel and Skye must forever choose—will they leave the place they love and the hardscrabble life they’ve built to move closer to civilization, or risk everything to embrace the emptiness and wildness that has defined them?

What follows is an uplifting, profoundly moving story about a mother and daughter fighting for each other, against all odds, as they learn to build community and foster the resilience that will keep them alive.

This is one of those books I don’t really love, but it deserves a good rating because it stuck with me and made me want to keep reading (even if I did want to smack the MC upside the head).

Was Laurel annoying and immature in some of her decisions? Absolutely. But having lived in rural Michigan my whole life and knowing people who never move away (sometimes they never even leave their county), I found her believable. She definitely struggles, but always toward the same goal–caring for her daughter. Laurel is definitely the imperfect main character, and her and Skye’s situation reminds me a bit of Lorelai and Rori Gilmore in The Gilmore Girls.

I do have one BIG beef with the audiobook that Penguin house should be ashamed of–the mispronunciation of one of northern Michigan’s most popular cities (Charlevoix) and our more recognizable landmark (the Mackinac Bridge). Sadly, I will always remember those–they really should be changed.

If you enjoy realistic women’s fiction, I recommend this book.

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For more contemporary women’s fiction, check out:

The Bookshop of Secrets by Mollie Rushmeyer
With My Soul by Laurie Batzel