cover image Undertow

Undertow

Lynn Stegner, Steven Culbert. Baskerville Publishers, $21 (235pp) ISBN 978-1-880909-02-7

When 27-year-old marine biologist Anne McBain discovers she is pregnant, she realizes her affair with eminent scientist Elliot Newhouse is at a turning point: either Elliot must leave his wife or Anne must end the affair and have an abortion. The next day Anne learns of her father's death, and as she travels to a remote Pacific Northwest island to scatter his ashes, this second crisis precipitates memories of sexual abuse by her father and of selfish, manipulative behavior by her mother. The burdens of past and present converge until a mindless one-night stand prompts Anne to a decision that frees her from her past even as it is ironically determined by it. First novelist Stegner (she is Wallace Stegner's daughter-in-law) evinces a fine-tuned sensitivity for complex emotions, but at times the abstract descriptions of Anne's feelings overpower the concrete events rather than add depth to them. At the core, though, Stegner's is a profoundly insightful, refreshingly honest portrait of dilemmas that will resonate for many women. Author tour. (Apr.)