by Nicole Baart
“Looks like you’ve got quite a bit of leverage,” one of the young officers quipped from over their shoulders.
Alex didn’t respond to the jab, but leaned in closer to the foot of the chair and carefully dusted dry earth off the branch.
“So there’re roots underneath the barn. Big deal.” The other rookie cop turned away and proved himself gutsy enough to grab Jim’s body and stop its dancelike sway.
“I don’t think it’s a tree branch,” Alex mumbled. “Too far away from anything growing nearby.”
“Sounds ominous,” Lucas quipped.
“Mysteries R Us.” Alex waved him closer. “Take a look at this.”
Lucas crawled down on his hands and knees and studied the object. It was barely peeking out of the ground, a hint of grimy hardness in a parallel line with earth. Only a couple of inches were exposed, but Lucas could tell that it extended far beyond eyesight and deep underground. Dirt worn as smooth as cement banked both sides—if the chair hadn’t disturbed its hard-packed grave, the incongruity beneath the barn floor might have never surfaced at all.
Reaching out a tentative hand, Lucas brushed the dirt away with his fingertips, revealing a grayish white surface that was comparatively smooth despite tiny pockmarks that dug minuscule basins across the exterior. He clawed at the dust with his nails until they began to split, then he turned to Alex with a sigh.
“The knife?”
Alex handed it over without a single cynical comment.
Lucas scratched and dug, prying chunks of earth away with each vicious slash. Within minutes, he could tentatively wrap his fingers around it. He pulled gently. It didn’t give an inch. Pulling harder produced the same effect: nothing.
“What do you think it is?” Alex cut in.
In the corner of his mind, a shadowy thought was beginning to materialize in smoky, elusive wisps. Lucas brushed more dust away, touched the object again, and realized with a paralyzing jolt that the doctor in him had always known what it was. His subconscious perceived it even when his mind refused to believe. “Oh, God.” Lucas whispered it—a prayer, an invocation, a heartfelt, aching plea—because he knew . . . he knew what lay beneath the feet of the community’s infamous outcast.
“Lucas, come on, don’t get all melodramatic.”
It was through a fog that Lucas managed to mumble, “I think we’re looking at Angela Sparks.”
A tangible quiet descended on the barn. Disbelief, thick and poisonous, choked each man as they stared at what they now knew to be a bone. A human bone. Moments trudged by before Alex found his voice. “I thought Jenna was helping her get out of town.”
“Me, too.”
Jenna Hudson was deep water. Mysterious, flowing, dark. She had stormed into Lucas’s life late in his residency and had affixed herself indelibly, ineradicably in his mind before she ever made it to his heart. Jenna, with her baggy jeans, piled hair, bare feet. She wore her own skin as if it was an afterthought, something that she had just tossed on as she swept out the door. She claimed him without meaning to, without really seeming to care if he was hers. But he was, and from the first moment, she knew it.
Jenna was all eyes. Blue so bottomless it was navy, almost black. And it was those eyes, in the face framed by curls that appeared to flow out of everything that was her, shadowy enough to be coal, that demanded all of Lucas. He had never been in love before, and he never bothered to question if he even knew what love truly was. He simply married her.
The first time Lucas told Jenna that he loved her, they were getting groceries. It became a Sunday ritual early in their relationship; the resident and the social worker, too busy during every other imaginable hour even to contemplate something as unnecessary as grocery shopping. And yet they found themselves spending hours as they discovered new delicacies, chased each other down aisles, and intentionally avoided every bargain. Their cart overflowed with chocolate cherry bordeaux ice cream, thin wedges of expensive cheeses, sprouted wheat bread trucked in from the organic bakery downtown.
Jenna was standing over the vine-ripened tomatoes, touching and carefully pressing and easing the chosen few into a clear plastic bag on the day it finally happened. Lucas was leaning over the grocery cart, indulging in his new favorite pastime of simply watching her.
“You know I love you.”
It was a casual statement, and Jenna didn’t even seem to notice. He thought about saying it again, about reaching over the tomatoes to touch her, make her feel his skin pressing against her hand, maybe even pull her close. He didn’t. It wasn’t until she had fastened the bag with a green twist tie and gently laid the crimson treasures in the bottom of the cart that she said, “I know.”
She didn’t say it back. She didn’t have to.
By the time Lucas proposed to her, Jenna still hadn’t managed to utter the words, but it didn’t matter. He knew how she felt, or at least he was convinced enough to believe that his love was enough for them both.
He asked her to marry him the day her grandmother lost her driver’s license. After her mother died, Jenna lived with her grandmother, Caroline, in a tiny flat that was closer to Milwaukee than Chicago. She drove over an hour each way just to get to work at the hospital. But her commitment to Oma dictated that she stay with her as long as she could care for the spunky eighty-five-year-old.
Lucas was with Jenna when she got the call that Caroline had been in an accident. The hospital where she had been taken was a good forty-five-minute drive, but Lucas and Jenna abandoned their date and sped to her side. The accident turned out to be a fender-bender, and Oma suffered no more than a bruised knee where her leg slid into the console inches from her seat.
When Caroline saw her granddaughter, the tears that were threatening to spill trailed one at a time down her wrinkled cheeks.
“Oma, why didn’t you stop at the stop sign?” Jenna asked.
Caroline’s answer solidified what they had known for some time: “I thought I stopped. I mean, I stopped in my mind.”
The officer who arrived at the scene pulled Jenna aside and gave her Caroline’s driver’s license.
It was in the kitchen of the flat, after Caroline had bathed and relaxed enough to fall fitfully asleep, that Lucas got down on one knee. It felt strange, even to him, as the cold of the linoleum floor seeped through his jeans and into his very bones. Jenna was sitting with her legs under her in an uncomfortable wooden chair, warming her hands on a cup of black coffee and looking into its depths as if answers waited for her in the dregs.
He hadn’t planned it this way. They were supposed to be bundled up beneath the lights of Navy Pier overlooking Lake Michigan. Her cheeks would be pink from the wind and a scarf would be knotted at her neck as she said something playful to him. He would have taken out the ring when she wasn’t looking. She would have turned away from the water and found him there. She would have laughed and said, “Yes.”
Instead, she raised tired eyes to look at him almost sadly. She asked, “What are you doing?” And he said it again, “I love you.”
It was the first time he saw her cry. Jenna put out her arms and he shuffled over to her, still on his knees. She wrapped herself around him, legs and all, and held on as if she was afraid of being swept away. “Are you asking me to marry you?” He was shocked to hear the disbelief in her voice.
“Yes,” he said.
She said it back. “Yes.”
When they moved to Iowa to follow Caroline, Lucas left the city with no regrets. She was with him, all five foot two inches of her, and nothing else mattered. They moved into a century home on the outskirts of a town that boasted no more than one grocery store and enough gossip to last at least a hundred lifetimes.
Blackhawk was nestled against the hills that marked the border between Iowa and South Dakota, and the muddy Big Sioux river ran a trembling line between the trees less than a stone’s throw from the invisible marker of the official city limits. The cobbled main street of Blackhawk’s picturesque downtown ambled past pret
ty houses with Dutch lace curtains and a hodgepodge collection of small-town amenities. There was a crumbling brick bank, an equally dilapidated police station, a cafe, a tiny library that specialized in interlibrary loans. But Blackhawk’s claim to fame was a trio of antiques stores that boasted sagging shelves of what Lucas considered junk, but which people came from miles around to admire and procure for dusty corners in their own homes.
The streets were cracked, the trees ancient and gnarled, the people reserved. Blackhawk was nothing to write home about, situated in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Sioux Falls was a forty-five-minute drive away. Omaha could be reached in two and a half hours, Minneapolis in four. But the Hudsons weren’t known for doing anything halfway, and they threw themselves into their new life with the same passion they directed at everything else.
Jenna started Safe House, a domestic violence aid center that specialized in helping victims of abuse begin new lives. Lucas was always stunned by the number of women who saw Jenna every week. Bustling metropolis or quiet village, violence seemed to know no boundaries.
And Lucas himself, making what he believed would be a temporary adjustment to small-town life even more easily than his wife, joined Blackhawk’s medical clinic and worked alongside two other doctors diagnosing strep throat and setting broken bones.
For the first few years, Lucas felt like he was camping, on vacation from normal life. Or on an extended mission trip like the three months he had spent just outside of Tegucigalpa, giving wide-eyed orphans their first taste of medical treatment. They had hated the needles. But then two years in Blackhawk turned into four, and four into eight, until a decade had passed and then a momentous dozen years—one-third of his life—and he was officially a small-town resident.
It wasn’t necessarily the life he had always dreamed of, but Jenna was the woman he had always dreamed of.
She was more than enough.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, thank you to an ever-growing list of amazing people. I would love nothing more than to express my sincere gratitude with a home-cooked meal and a bottle (or two) of fine wine, but Iowa is hardly a vacation destination. I may have to settle for offering a simpler token of my enduring thanks—and the assurance that my door (and my kitchen) is always open.
A huge thank-you (and an even huger hug) to Josh and Jessica Louwerse for taking care of Aaron and me when we were in Anchorage. From breakfast at Snow City to a last-minute trip to Seward, you unknowingly set the stage for this entire book. Thank you especially for introducing us to a host of people who helped me better understand all that is Alaska. Every conversation counted.
I am indebted to Ken Moll and Blair Rorabaugh for sharing their knowledge of all things aeronautical. Thanks especially to Blair for taking me up in your plane over Resurrection Bay and not crashing when I was sure we were doomed. This book is richer for the experience and for your expertise. And, of course, any mistakes or inaccuracies in this book are all mine.
Big thanks to the lovely ladies who helped me navigate the stacks in the Alaska collection of the Loussac Library in Anchorage. Librarians rock.
To my patchwork of editors—from Todd Diakow (who has been with me from the very first draft of my very first book) all the way to new reader Katie Nice (who stepped in with encouraging words at exactly the right time), thank you. As for the rest of you, you know who you are. I would be lost without you.
I am beyond blessed to be represented by the amazing women of Browne & Miller Literary Associates. Thank you for your wisdom and advice, and for late-night brainstorming sessions fueled by cupcakes and wine. It still humbles me that you believe in me and my stories.
Forever and always, thank you to my family, for putting up with me when I’m scattered and distracted, and for letting me do this thing that I love. More than anything, thank you for continuing to remind me that the greatest story I’ll ever tell is the one I live with you. Aaron, Isaac, Judah, and Matthias, I love you to the moon and back.
Reading Group Guide
TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why do you think the author chose to include a Prologue from Danica’s point of view about the first time Etsell took her flying? How did this opening set the tone for the rest of the novel?
2. The author uses an interesting point-of-view technique, alternating chapters from Danica’s first-person point of view with those from a more limited third-person point of view. What effect did this have on your reading experience?
3. Danica feels betrayed and upset when Etsell tells her about his three-week trip to Alaska. She accuses him of making an important decision they should have made together. He in turn accuses her of making all their decisions. Explain Danica’s reaction. Do you feel that she is justified? How accurate is Etsell’s complaint? Use examples from the novel to support your opinion.
4. On page 47, Benjamin tells Danica, “Never do what you should do, Dani. Do what you have to do.” What do you think he means by this? Do you agree or disagree?
5. Danica and Etsell may not have had much in common, but they both grew up with untraditional parenting. Compare and contrast the relationship Etsell has with Hazel (his “surrogate mother”) with the relationship between Danica and Charlene. Did Danica have a “surrogate mother”?
6. Danica describes her oldest sister as somewhat detached and cold. Natalie doesn’t come to visit Danica until Etsell has been missing for two months. Yet Danica is “convinced of her sister’s love, even if Natalie couldn’t bring herself to say it and didn’t know how to show it.” Do you think Danica understands her loved ones and forgives them for their faults, or does she just have a lifelong history of making excuses for everyone around her? Explain your opinion.
7. Who did you suspect was at the door on page 235? Were you surprised at Sam’s news? Why or why not?
8. Danica asks her neighbor Ben—a pastor—why in all his visits he’s never mentioned God. “I have,” he says. “In lots of different ways” (page 312). What do you think he means? Identify and discuss what some of these “different ways” might be.
9. Danica’s older sister Natalie tells Danica, “We fail each other. Every day in a million different ways” (page 224). Does Danica agree? Do you? Why or why not?
10. When Danica finally tells her whole family about the baby, everyone seems divided on what she should do. Hazel and Char seem to think it would only hurt Danica in the long run to have such a reminder in her life, whereas Kat seems to feel the baby belongs more with Danica than with a stranger. What would you do in her shoes?
11. Unlike most widows, Danica is never delivered a body or even true confirmation of Etsell’s death. Identify and discuss some of the ways in which she attempts to move on with her life. What finally marks a true shift for her toward healing? How does she find closure?
12. At the end of the book, Danica wrestles with whether or not she should adopt Etsell and Sam’s child. In the Epilogue, she is definitely mothering an infant. Whose baby is it? Etsell and Sam’s? Or Danica and Benjamin’s? Use clues from the text and your own understanding of Dani’s growth throughout the book to make a case for the scenario you believe is the most likely.
ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. Sam’s unexpected visit interrupts a game of canasta between Danica, her sisters, their mother, Hazel, and Ben. Try learning to play this popular card game from the 1940s with members of your book club.
2. Danica and Etsell often hike to the river and enjoy lazing around, their feet in the water. Bring a little of their world to life by holding your next book club meeting beside a local river or lake.
3. In the novel, Kat decides to mark Etsell’s passing from their lives in a very physical way, asking Danica to lop off her ponytail and give her a short new hairstyle. Many women mark major life changes by dramatically coloring or cutting their hair. If you’re feeling brave, why not experience the difference such a change can make in your life by visiting your favorite beautician and trying a totally new look
?
A CONVERSATION WITH NICOLE BAART
1. You write a blog on your website, www.nicolebaart.com. What made you decide to start blogging, and how is it working for you?
I started blogging shortly after I signed my first publishing contract because I thought it was part and parcel of the whole writing gig. At first I felt silly and inadequate as I tried to come up with witty, interesting posts. Now I just write about whatever is on my mind. Sometimes I blog about my publishing experiences, but more often than not my posts are a place for me to think out loud about life, family, relationships . . . I even post recipes or snippets of funny conversations I have with my kids. It’s a pretty mixed bag, but I do love doing it. There’s a fantastic online community that I never knew existed until I started to blog.
2. Far from Here is your fifth novel. How has your writing process evolved since your first novel? What is the first thing you do when beginning a new book?
The first thing I do when I begin a new book is buy a brand-new package of my favorite pens and six legal pads of paper. When the notebooks are full, the book is done. That’s how I wrote my first book, and my process hasn’t changed much since then. I still write longhand and then transfer the book chapter-by-chapter to my computer. I’d say the biggest thing that has changed about my writing process is my approach to plotting. I used to just let the book evolve, but I like to have a pretty detailed outline to work from these days. Of course, that doesn’t mean I stick to it.
3. You include a lot of specific details in your novel, lending authenticity to your settings and characters. In particular, your description of Danica’s work in the salon and her restoration hobby, as well as her trip to faraway Alaska, come to mind. What kind of research did you do for this book?
My mother restored furniture when I was a little girl, and it’s something that has always interested me. I’m currently in the process of refinishing an old dining-room table for outdoor use by weatherproofing it and creating a mosaic tile pattern on the tabletop. It’s fun, but a bit overwhelming.