By Cathy Hurst for Dwight Public Library
Amy Stuart’s first book Still Mine was an instant national bestseller in Canada and the winner of the 2011 Writer’s Union of Canada Short Fiction Competition. She introduced two main characters, Clare and Malcolm. In her second novel Still Water, she has brought back the two characters in another heart-wrenching and heart-pounding thriller. Still Water is a sequel but is also a good stand-alone book. I guarantee that you will end up reading both of them no matter which one you start first!
Clare is escaping from an abusive husband. After she lost her baby when he threw her down the stairs, she plotted and planned and escaped one night. She had driven over 1,000 miles cross-country but was found by Malcolm, a private investigator hired by her husband. But rather than turning her in, he hires her to find another missing woman. Who better to find a missing woman than another missing woman?
In Still Water, she finds her way to a private and somewhat secret women’s shelter on the outskirts of a town called High River. There is not much secrecy any more when the police are enlisted to find a missing woman, Sally Proulx, and her son, William. It is believed that they have fallen into the fast-moving river beside the shelter. Clare arrives pretending to be the missing woman’s former childhood friend. The woman supposedly had revealed this secret place to Clare and when Clare heard her “friend” was missing, she came to help.
Did the woman really drown and, if she did, was it an accident or a murder? The police have searched up and down the river and have few leads. Clare, while living at the place, finds the local residents all very suspect. They all seem to have secrets that little by little they are confiding in to Clare. The owner of the shelter and her two brothers, when they were children, witnessed the murder of their mother by their father. The horrific incident affected them in different ways.
Meanwhile, Malcolm, who always stays in the background and out of sight, seems to be coming apart at the seams. And coincidence or not, the new police detective in town has a history with Malcolm. Clare doesn’t know whom to trust! She also feels that despite her alias, the new police detective seems to know a lot about her and her husband and is threatening to give her whereabouts away if she doesn’t cooperate.
Clare is feeling that maybe she is getting good at something and might possibly have a future and this fellow is threatening her very existence. As is the letter from her husband she received at the end of the first book indicating that he knows how to find her.
I have enjoyed both books. I found the first one a little far-fetched in spots but this one takes on dips and turns when you least expect it. Everyone is holding a secret and when the secrets are spilled, you are taken by surprise.
Amy Stuart has a Huntsville/Muskoka connection: she is a former Muskoka Novel Marathon winner and her parents have a cottage on Lake of Bays. She has spent much time enjoying the rivers and waterfalls around the cottage which played a part as she discusses the river and the fast-moving water in her book. She said “the bulk of Still Water was written there.”
Stuart received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UBC. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three sons and works as a teacher at a Toronto high school.
Amy Stuart will be in Huntsville for a joint Books and Brunch presentation by Huntsville Public Library and Lake of Bays Public Library on Sunday, July 22 at 1:00 p.m. at Hidden Valley Resort. Further details will be announced soon.
Dwight Public Library is one of two branches in the Lake of Bays Township Public Library. It has launched a renovation project that will see its space expand by 1,800 sq. ft. and for which it is currently raising funds.
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