My memories are so like that hat full of butterflies, some already deteriorating the moment they are collected, some breathed back to life now and again, for a brief moment, by the scent on a passing wind–the smell of an orange, perhaps, or a whiff of brown-sugar fudge–before drifting away, just out of my reach. How much of myself flits away with each of these tattered memories? How much of myself have I already lost? (Turtle Valley, p. 289) It is the end of a long, dry summer in Turtle Valley, British Columbia, and when a raging forest fire threatens to destroy Kat’s childhood home, she returns with her son and estranged husband to help her elderly parents prepare for evacuation. Haunted by memories of the relationship she had with a man she loved and left fifteen years before, Kat discovers a ghostly link between her mother’s tragic past and her own quest to find a love that has the power to fulfill and sustain her. Sure to be remembered as one of her most satisfying novels, Turtle Valley is a page-turner filled with the lush descriptions, emotional truths and dark poetry that have made Gail Anderson-Dargatz an international literary sensation.
