Synopsis:
After a commercial audition leads to a severe anxiety attack, Maud Maxwell packs her candlesticks, Navajo wall hangings, and wooden spoons and flees Los Angeles, her stagnant relationship, and a faltering acting career. While driving along a lonely two-lane desert highway, she wonders: Where is the perfect love, the children, the security of a grounded life? Maud believes the answer lies in Marengo, a small town outside Santa Fe, where her sister Lizzie resides. Now Marengo beckons to Maud like the North Star on a dark night.
Yet Maud's life seems glamorous to Lizzie, who longs for the kind of motion that sweeps her sister from city to city, realizing her art. Everyone had always assumed Lizzie would be a successful artist. But instead of fame, she had three children by three different fathers. Instead of Paris, she settled in Marengo, teaching and painting pictures for a greeting card company.
But Maud is not the only one drawn to Marengo. Jake Arboles has returned home after spending two years in Nashville trying to break into the songwriting business. He and Lizzie were balanced on the edge of commitment until their relationship ended abruptly; a loss that has haunted them both ever since.
The complex bond and unspoken resentments between sisters . . . the legacy of children who feel they never fulfilled their parents' expectations . . . the aching search for home and connection and community . . . the ever-changing landscape of family and those who define it . . . Sands Hall weaves these powerful elements into a brilliantly written novel ripe with discovery and wonder—and the realization that holding on to someone is really about letting go.
From the Back Cover:
"In the small western town of Marengo one person arrives, one person returns, one person stays put. Each inhabits a private world of possibility, passion, and regret. Bring them together and you have Sand Halls's Catching Heaven, a book that contains some of the realest fictional people you'll ever meet. Elegantly constructed, vividly conveyed, with heart enough for three."
-KAREN JOY FOWLER
"Sands Hall is a wonderful writer, full of soul and feeling."
-ANNE LAMOTT
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