The Northern Reach: A Novel

W.S. Winslow

Mar 2021 · Sold by Flatiron Books

About this ebook

A heart-wrenching first novel about the power of place and family ties, the weight of the stories we choose to tell, and the burden of those we hide

Frozen in grief after the loss of her son at sea, Edith Baines stares across the water at a schooner, under full sail yet motionless in the winter wind and surging tide of the Northern Reach. Edith seems to be hallucinating. Or is she? Edith’s boat-watch opens The Northern Reach, set in the coastal town of Wellbridge, Maine, where townspeople squeeze a living from the perilous bay or scrape by on the largesse of the summer folk and whatever they can cobble together, salvage, or grab.

At the center of town life is the Baines family, land-rich, cash-poor descendants of town founders, along with the ne’er-do-well Moody clan, the Martins of Skunk Pond, and the dirt farming, bootlegging Edgecombs. Over the course of the twentieth century, the families intersect, interact, and intermarry, grappling with secrets and prejudices that span generations, opening new wounds and reckoning with old ghosts.

W. S. Winslow's The Northern Reach is a breathtaking debut about the complexity of family, the cultural legacy of place, and the people and experiences that shape us.

Ratings and reviews

I received a free electronic ARC of this debut historical novel from Netgalley, W.S.Winslow, and Flatiron Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Winslow is an author I am pleased to recommend to friends and family. She is a novelist I will enjoy watching grow. We follow four families through several generations, families isolated much of the year by weather, residing in a very small, insular fishing village on the Atlantic coast in Maine. Weather is one of the main characters of this novel. And she is a witch. Within pages, I was lost in this story, and it ended much more quickly than I wanted. Like all families, we have the good and bad, strong and weak, invested and soon-to-be-gone in our character lineup. Those who relish the challenges of living in a place with 9 months of deep freeze, very limited places offering employment of any kind, and the majority of families involved in a weakening fishing vocation. It takes a certain make of human to rise to this sort of challenge. I love my desert southwest, but I would not last a week in Maine. It's a really nice place to visit, however. Remotely, if possible. Watching these folks handle the ups and downs of this life is most interesting, and Ms. Winslow paints a compelling picture of both the place and the souls that relish this life.

About the author

W. S. Winslow was born and raised in Maine but spent most of her working life in San Francisco and New York in corporate communications and marketing. A ninth-generation Mainer, she now spends most of the year in a small town Downeast. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French from the University of Maine, and an MFA from NYU. Her fiction has been published in Yemassee Journal and Bird's Thumb. The Northern Reach is her first novel.