THE NORTHERN REACH

"Above the reach, low clouds sleepwalk across the February sky.   Today they are fibrous, striated, like flesh being slowly torn from the bone.   It's four in the afternoon and already night has stared chewing away the edges of the day."
There are paragraphs like this that a classroom teacher can tear apart when students are working on their polished papers.   This piece contains personification which is sometimes difficult to get across to kids and their writing.​

This story takes place in the northern part of Wellbridge, Maine with the Moody clan and the dirty farming Edgecombs.   It spans from 1907 to 2017 with the characters related through blood or marriage.    The changeable and volatile weather plays a big part in this story.
Edith's husband and two sons went fishing and only one came home.   "This fate epitomizes the Northern Reach's trajectory.   Through marriage and unplanned pregnancies four separate families begin intertwining their lives in the 1900's.   Lawsons marry into Moodys marring into Martins marry into Baines and back again."     There are stories from each generation.
The timeline when beginning each chapter helps keep track of the story.
Often the writing  can be very dark in nature.   Other times are more light-hearted.

As one of the reviewers wrote:  "Winslow is using words as they're meant to be used.   Tossing them together without scrambling, off-handedly dropping them on the page for maximum impact."
I loved this book, marking pages that will improve my writing, while also putting words together that make the scene so vivid it's as you are standing right there.  
​It's a great debut novel.
"This is winter's waking death:  half-light, refracted by grey water and dirty snow, begging the voracious dark to end its misery."