Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages

A Madison, Wis., woman takes a midlife detour to the northern woods of the Badger State after an uncle wills her a crumbling resort on remote Star Lake. Hannah Swann's personal and professional life may be a bit stagnant—she writes about "Bad Women Poets" of the 1800s and pursues a half-hearted affair with a married man—but she's still loathe to spend too long up north. But as she rolls up her sleeves and opens the resort, she begins to shake her self-doubts and her reliance on Valium, bonding with chirpy, folksy barmaid-cum-taxidermist Ginger. Ginger nudges Hannah into friendship with fishing guide Dan Kerry, who in turn enlists Hannah in the fight against a mining company that threatens Star Lake, thereby helping her find common ground with her activist adult daughter. Family secrets and industrial misdemeanors make for lightly troubling threads in Hannah's summer of reinvention, but Rath's excessively oddball cast of characters, from the lascivious smalltown lawyer to the bird-regulating "Loon Ranger," lighten the mood. Hannah's release from paralyzing self-doubt has its predictable setbacks and victories, but her gradual acceptance of Star Lake's eccentricities makes for a diversion as pleasant as a quiet summer day at the lakeshore. (Aug.)