Laurentian Divide

"Thanks to Stonich’s keen depictions, this is a small town peopled with actual people: diverse individuals united by a common experience of place. Laurentian Divide transports attention to a ‘scrap of near-nowhere’ because ‘life isn’t something that happens to you—how you choose to react to what happens is life.’"—Foreword Review

"Stonich weaves past and present into a lyrical, immersive novel. Fans of Kent Haruf and Paulette Jiles will fall in love with Stonich’s depiction of Minnesota: harsh and welcoming, friendly and unforgiving, all at once. Exploring the consequences of actions set in motion months, years, or even decades ago, Stonich’s slow burn of a novel questions what—and who—can belong to us."—Booklist

"Laurentian Divide does what a good sequel should. It fills in details and updates on the characters that we love, but also tells a compelling story of its own. There is an understanding of the bittersweet realities of life, an acceptance of the good and bad that comes with the simple act of living." —Nicole M. Burrell

Winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story

Poignant portrayals of life on the edge in northern Minnesota border country, from the best-selling author of These Granite Islands and Vacationland 

Bitter winters are nothing new in Hatchet Inlet, hard up against the ridge of the Laurentian Divide, but the advent of spring can’t thaw the community’s collective grief, lingering since a senseless tragedy the previous fall. What is different this year is what’s missing: Rauri Paar, the last private landowner in the Reserve, whose annual emergence from his remote iced-in islands marks the beginning of spring and the promise of a kinder season. 

The town’s residents gather at the local diner and, amid talk of spring weather, the latest gossip, roadkill, and the daily special, take bets on when Rauri will appear—or imagine what happened to him during the long and brutal winter. Retired union miner and widower Alpo Lahti is about to wed the diner’s charming and lively waitress, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri still unaccounted for, celebration seems premature. Alpo’s son Pete struggles to find his straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy might be having second thoughts. 

Weaving in and out of each other’s reach, trying hard to do their best (all the while wondering what that might be), the residents of this remote town in all their sweetness and sorrow remind us once more of the inescapable lurches of the heart and unexpected turns of our human comedy.

Sarah Stonich is the best-selling author of These Granite Islands (Minnesota, 2013), which has been translated into seven languages and shortlisted for France’s Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle; the critically acclaimed novel The Ice Chorus; and a memoir, Shelter: Off the Grid in the Mostly Magnetic North (Minnesota, 2017). Her novel-in-stories, Vacationland (Minnesota, 2013), is the first volume in her Northern Trilogy, followed by Laurentian Divide. She has also written the novels Fishing with RayAnne and Reeling. The founder of WordStalkers.com, she lives on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.