The Thin Place

The prize-winning author of Versailles tells the story of a small New England village unsettled by a young girls unearthly gift. In Varennes, a town near the Canadian border, three girls come across the body of a dead man on the local lakes beach. Two of them run to get help, but twelve-year-old Mees Kipp stays with the body and somehow, inexplicably, brings it back to life. Her mysterious gift is at the center of this haunting and transcendent novel. THE THIN PLACE is the story of these girls, their town, and the worldly and otherworldly forces that come into play there over one summer. Writing at the peak of her powers, Kathryn Davis draws on commonplace formspolice blotters, garden almanacs, Sunday sermons, horoscopes, and diariesto convey the rich rhythms of life in Varennes. From the ladies in the old-folks home to trappers, lawyers, teachers, ministers, drug addictseven the dogs and cats, beavers and bearsshe peoples this novel with astonishingly vivid beings. The extraordinary comes to visit an ordinary town.