Sprawling across the heart of the park, Opeongo is the largest of Algonquin’s more than 1,500 lakes and undeniably one of its most beautiful.

My mother had mentioned our great grandmother often when we were children, but that was a long time ago and I hadn’t given her a thought for years. This long, narrow lake occupies a natural fracture in Algonquin’s bedrock landscape and forms part of the headwaters of the Barron River, which enters its own spectacular canyon just a few kilometres downstream of the lake.In the fall, the surrounding hardwood forest explodes into a riot of colour and canoeists can forage for wild cranberries at the lake’s southern outlet.

The people who are successful in the common acceptable concept of success have many problems such as the disagreement between partners and academic dishonesty in their life.First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. A touching meditation on the power of loyalty and loss, on the ways in which we pay our debts and settle old scores, and on what it means to love, to accept, to succeed—and to negotiate fate’s obstacle courses.

Struan is a place in which people help one another out; housewives take cooked meals to a family in distress, the doctor fails to present a bill to those who would find it hard to pay. And I completely relate to Katherine’s numbness, the reluctance to feel anything about anyone—if you care, there’s a good chance that they will get yanked away from you. As she tells her story, Kate comes to understand not only how it affected her, but also her siblings - big brothers Luke and Matt, and baby sister Bo. Kate sees the loss of Matt's potential academic career as a terrible sacrifice, and is unable to come to terms with Marie or Matt thereafter.For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur—offstage.