Undercurrents: A Novel

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Undercurrents, the debut novel from fifth-generation Montanan, Joan Maki, examines the thresholds of twilight, its forest doorways and river crossings, to dissect the emotional and psychological aftermath of Kit in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of Patrick, a childhood friend who vanished so suddenly it was as if he fell into the Earth. Decades after this incident, Kit escapes her rural Montana upbringing for a new life in the city, but the unsolved case and the nagging questions she has had to carry her whole life bind her to her past. Was Patrick claimed by natural forces, falling into the river or a ravine? Did his abusive father have something to do with it? Or, as old Marg believes, was the boy claimed by the “people of the forest”? Will Kit be able to find closure as she raises her own child and is inevitably drawn back toward the woods of home? Imbued with the Finnish concept of metsanpeitto, loosely translated as “forest cover, ” Undercurrents charts the liminal destruction of society and self where rural, wild places are encroached upon by more contemporary forces. Like a story written on a warped mirror,  Undercurrents presents a calm surface slightly askew, and definitely dangerous, where the mind, lore, religion, and reality collide in its uncanny reflections.