Starred review from March 21, 2016
Smith’s excellent sophomore effort (after Glaciers) follows struggling journalist Lucie Bowen who, after being deeded ownership of the island cottage of her childhood, returns there to live and regroup. It’s been 20 years since she and her mother fled Orwell Island on Washington’s San Juan archipelago, after a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake rattled the land, blew up a refinery, and took her father’s life. But a letter from her childhood friend Katie has beckoned her back. Katie has joined an environmentalist commune on previously abandoned nearby Marrow Island, and she touts that her farm collective’s efforts have revitalized the land and invites Lucie to visit and see the changes for herself. Their reunion and the looming sense of menace ratchet up the novel’s suspense; the dread is clear from the outset due to Lucie’s journalistic skepticism. As the two women—along with forest ranger Carey McCoy and colony leader Sister J.—interact over a weekend on the island, it becomes disturbingly clear that Marrow Island may be having a sinister effect on the dedicated, religious citizen farmers living off the primitive land. Smith’s story carries the same heft, descriptive nuance, and narrative spark that distinguished her debut, but this time, she more finely hones her characters’ emotional rhythm and atmospheric location to create a thoroughly eerie reading experience capped off with a startling conclusion. Agent: Seth Fishman, the Gernert Company.
January 1, 2016
Smith's sparely gorgeous debut, Glaciers, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick and one of my favorite novels of 2012. In a new work grabbed in a hotly contested auction, journalist Lucie Bowen returns to Marrow Island, which she fled with her mother and many others 20 years previously after an earthquake destabilized the local refinery, wreaking ecological havoc. Now a group of dedicated environmentalists are reclaiming the land, but Lucie thinks that there's (suspiciously) more to their story. With a 30,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 25, 2016
Reader Rankin beautifully renders the lyrical prose of this compelling and enigmatic novel. Twenty years have passed since a cataclysmic earthquake struck the northwest coast of Washington State, resulting in widespread devastation, including a terrible fire at an oil refinery on the isolated Marrow Island. Efforts to battle the blaze with flame retardants and other chemicals so polluted the soil and groundwater that the island was rendered toxic and uninhabitable. Lucie Bowen, an environmental journalist whose father died in the fire, returns to Marrow, where a small community of people have been working under the radar to make the land livable again. But the island harbors dark and deadly secrets. Rankin’s clear and thoughtful reading perfectly captures Lucie’s emotional turmoil as she tries to reconcile her past with the present and an uncertain future. She effortlessly navigates the story’s shifts in time, as well as the small, distinctly portrayed cast of characters. Her pacing and tone keep the story moving at a deceptively leisurely pace, building stealthily to a suspenseful and moving climax. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover.
March 1, 2016
As Smith imagines in her wrenching and limpidly written second novel (after Glaciers), Orwell and Marrow islands are far enough from the rest of Washington's San Juans to be practically in Canadian waters and are linked not just by geography but also by tragedy. An earthquake 20 years ago destroyed Marrow Island's refinery, leaving several workers dead, including narrator Lucie's father, and flame retardants and oil-dispersing chemicals have seeped into the island's soil, making the groundwater toxic. Yet Lucie has returned to the family cabin on nearby, still-inhabited Orwell, possibly to settle there but certainly to visit long-lost friend Katie, who lives in a utopian colony on Marrow intent on reclaiming the land. The novel moves between events immediately before and several years after the colonists gravely threaten Lucie, and the slow unfolding of what happened creates palpable tension. Smith is excellent at showing the terrible things people can do for the sake of their ideals, though not all readers will be persuaded, despite Lucie's strong sense of loyalty and emotionally confused past, that she would feel less angry than almost nobly concerned about those who nearly killed her. VERDICT A near-perfect read but for the frustrating sense that our heroine concedes too much. [See Prepub Alert, 11/30/15.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.