Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks

In Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks, Odella's mother harbors guilt from an accident that happened when she was only 16 years old. Sally and three of her friends drove their car out on Mistik Lake and fell through the ice. Everyone was killed but Sally. The people of Mistik Lake say that it wasn't her fault; that she wasn't even driving, but Sally still feels the guilt and finds herself running from everything. When Odella is 16, her mother finally runs away from her family moves to Iceland with her lover. This book is how Odella learns to live with that abandonment, but it is also about why Sally feels the need to always run away from love.

Odella feels a pull to Mistik Lake where her family has a cabin and she and her two sisters spent most of their summers growing up. One summer she meets Jimmy and falls in love. The draw to Jimmy forces her to move back to Mistik Lake to spend the summer before going to college. She finds a job working at the meat counter of the local grocery store with a man who once dated her mother. That summer Odella finally learns the dark secrets about her mother and herself.

This is a gentle read that will be enjoyed by anyone who has ever lived in a small town. The citizens of Mistik Lake are so intertwined that it is hard to separate the families from one another and, of course, everyone knows everyone else's business. Odella, who has lived in a city her entire life, finds it hard to understand how everyone knew her mother and has stories to tell about her growing up. Mistik Lake tells the story of a teenage romance and the adults who have their secrets as they struggled to find love themselves.