BookView Review

MacDonald explores the currents of loss, memory, and resilience in this compassionate story collection. The stories range from coastal harbors and offshore oil rigs to sacred rivers and drought-stricken reservoirs. While the settings vary widely, the collection is united by its interest in people facing moments of uncertainty. Water serves as a recurring presence—sometimes destructive, sometimes restorative, often indifferent—but the stories themselves are less concerned with water than with the difficult choices people make when life refuses to remain still. 

The collection’s emotional range is evident from story to story. In “The Ark Encounter,” an elderly woman displaced by a hurricane struggles with grief, loneliness, and the challenge of rebuilding after disaster. “The Hibernia” follows three men stranded on an offshore oil rig by dense fog, each carrying a different personal crisis. In “The Wood Turner,” two brothers revisit a family conflict that has lingered for years, exposing old wounds and long-buried resentments. Meanwhile, “Dragon Boat Races” examines the emotional aftershocks of a failed relationship, finding surprising depth in a seemingly ordinary weekend event.

MacDonald excels at portraying people whose lives rarely appear at the center of fiction. Her characters are workers, retirees, caregivers, immigrants, and parents—people navigating family obligations, aging, regret, and change. They are neither heroic nor villainous, and the collection’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to simplify them. Even when characters make poor decisions, MacDonald approaches them with empathy rather than judgment. Her prose is clear and understated and the settings vivid. The result is a collection of quiet power, one that finds meaning in life’s small reckonings and hard-won moments of understanding. A stunner.

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