Set against the wild terrain of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape, this universal drama of love and misunderstanding recounts a family’s tragic and moving past. None of them could have expected the tumultuous times ahead—least of all Kate’s older brothers, Matt and Luke. The town of Straun was an invention—but in the eyes of Mary Lawson, she imagined it located at the northern edge of the vast and beautiful area of lakes, rocks, and forests known as a Canadian Shield, in northern Ontario.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson | Goodreads

Yet a chance for a kind of reconciliation comes up when Kate receives an invitation to the 18th birthday party of Matt's son Simon. I felt a sense of foreboding and apprehension throughout this fairly short novel while the tension built slowly greater and greater until the crescendo at the end. Great-grandmother Morrison' love of learning set the standard against which Kate judged everyone around her. He would have to be pretty special for Kate to be interested in him, and he would have to be quite unusual to be interested in Kate, disillusioned and bitter as she is! There are flashes of dry humour in the writing itself, and in the dialogue on which so much of the book's taut realism depends.

There is a sense in Crow Lake of pent-up energy, of something about to burst open or explode, but it never quite happens.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson | Waterstones

At first she won't even consider inviting Daniel, so deep is her reserve and mistrust (not to mention a certain embarrassment about taking him to Crow Lake). Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful and set to inherit the farm and his father’s character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know – the family misfit.Q. Do you see Kate’s character as being autobiographical to a certain extent and if so, in what ways?