Tin Camp Road
A Novel
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Chosen as the Library of Congress's "Great Reads from Great Places" Michigan selection for 2023
"Moving and brave." —People
Set against the wide open beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a wise, big hearted novel in which a young single mother and her ten-year-old daughter stand up to the trials of rural poverty and find the community they need in order to survive.
Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter Skye have always been each other's everything. The pair live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need?
One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and, without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly it feels like the independence that has defined them is a liability. And when a dangerous incident threatens to separate them, Laurel and Skye must forever choose--will they leave the place they love and the hardscrabble life they've built to move closer to civilization, or risk everything to embrace the emptiness and wildness that has defined them?
What follows is an uplifting, profoundly moving story about a mother and daughter fighting for each other, against all odds, as they learn to build community and foster the resilience that will keep them alive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Airgood returns to Michigan's Upper Peninsula—the backdrop of her debut, South of Superior—for a heartfelt story of a tourist town's permanent residents. Laurel Hill and her vivacious 10-year-old daughter, Skye, live precariously in a rundown Gallion, Mich., rental, where the heat and running water rarely work. Laurel makes do with odd cleaning jobs, her heart bruised by the loss of her family home, which is now a bed and breakfast owned by a woman who takes an interest in Skye. Their friendship makes Laurel more conscious of the financial chasm between them, but Laurel and Skye find joy in the resplendent lake and stunning vistas ("Laurel had suspected early on that most of the time what people really needed was within themselves. Gallion was quiet enough to hear that needed-thing whispering, wild enough to glimpse it if you looked"). After Laurel's landlord gives them the boot at the beginning of winter to capitalize on the expanding short-term rental market, Laurel moves them to a trailer in the woods. Then, after Laurel's childhood friend, Jenny, asks her to save her from an abusive ex, Laurel leaves Skye alone, as she often does, and a confluence of events results in their lives being ruptured. Throughout, Airgood offers an impactful look at the ineffable bond between a mother and daughter and the tenuous grip they have on their sense of home. Readers will fall in love with this story's rich characters and scenery.
