Description
This novel, by the author of The Height and Depth of Everything, was inspired by California's rivers and the dams that contain and shape them. For several generations, Katharine Haake’s family has been intimately linked with the landscape and history of far-northern California. Here she offers a brilliant novel that interlaces autobiographical writing, natural history, and reflections on the craft of writing itself. Shasta Dam, the graceful, curved centerpiece of California’s Central Valley Project, lies at the heart of this multi-layered work. The dam’s construction, and the impact of its presence, becomes the obsession and occupation for all of Haake’s characters. Containing and controlling the water of three northern California rivers, the dam also structures the characters’ efforts to understand the past in an attempt to find the transcendent in what they have witnessed or learned—about vanished native peoples, for example, or lost intimacies between water, earth, animals, and humans.

Reviews
“In a paean to the craft of writing and strength of language, Haake mixes her family’s oral history with that of California’s natural one imparting a rich narrative of rivers, dams, and floods, mothers, sons, and daughters. At its heart is the Shasta Dam project, both boondoggle and benefit to California’s central valley. At its soul, two young girls, one raped, one blind. Weaving fiction with fact, Haake equates nature’s basic elements (earth, fire, water) with those of mankind (love, livelihood, safety). Whether spinning a tale or telling the truth, Haake’s eloquence has as much power to move mountains as the engineers and surveyors whose dams so dramatically changed the landscape of her beloved home.” —Carol Haggas, Booklist

“What makes Haake’s book so remarkable is her utter candor as a writer.