Sanctuary Line

Book excerpt: Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth century in Ireland and Ontario into a contemporary story of events in the lives of one family. Recently returned to the Lake Erie to study the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, entomologist Liz Crane moves into her family's now-deserted farmhouse. Casting a shadow over her life is the recent death of her cousin, Amanda Butler, a gifted military strategist killed in Afghanistan, and the disappearance many years earlier of her irrepressible, charismatic uncle. Liz explores the many-layered history of the eccentric Butler family, ancestral lighthouse-keepers, agriculturalists and dreamers and re-evaluates the lives of the seasonal workers imported each summer from Mexico to harvest the fruit on the farm, with them Teo, a young boy alone in his apartness. Surrounded by memories, Liz herself is haunted by a deeply buried family secret, by four different, unexpected love affairs, and by the tragic events that ultimately altered all their futures. In this eloquent and powerful narrative, Jane Urquhart brings to vivid life those fragile patterns of the past that shape who we are, and shows the extent to which we can be influenced by absences on the difficult path to understanding and forgiveness.