Joseph A. Citro takes us back to Antrim, Vermont, and the site of the ugliest event in the town's history.

Mrs. Miniver, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, Aunt Elsa, are now joined by Mrs. (and Mr.) Appleyard of Boston, younger than Aunt Elsa, older and mellower than Mrs. Miniver and the Cugate. Mother of grown children, who are not too respectful but casually devoted, whom she loves for their faults rather than their virtues, wife of a loyal but fierily opinionated husband, Mrs. Appleyard is impish about expected things, unexpected, and sturdily, individually Bostonian....

"On the eve of Vermont's Great Flood of 1927, rain falls on northern Lake Champlain. Otter's father has been missing since World War I, and then a letter arrives with surprising news. Royal St. Onge may be alive! Otter and Granddad load a canoe with Mississquoi Moonbeam and paddle across Goose Bay to rendezvous at the family camp, but Otter's father is nowhere to be found, and bullet holes scar the cabin walls. The trail finally leads to a cutthroat...

In 1830, Experience "Speedy" Goodrich died after undergoing an abortion in Burlington, Vermont. This tragedy and the resulting inquiry provide the foundation for Jeffrey D. Marshall's first novel. From the vibrant intellectual life of the University of Vermont to the public outcry over grave-robbing medical students in search of subjects for dissection, and from the progressive social movements of the day to the commercial bustle of a thriving inland...