The Thin Place

The prize-winning author of Versailles tells the story of a small New England village unsettled by a young girl's unearthly gift. In Varennes, a town near the Canadian border, three girls come across the body of a dead man on the local lake's beach. Two of them run to get help, but twelve-year-old Mees Kipp stays with the body and somehow, inexplicably, brings it back to life. Her mysterious gift is at the center of this haunting and transcendent novel. The Thin Place is the story of these girls, their town, and the worldly and otherworldly forces that come into play there over one summer. Writing at the peak of her powers, Kathryn Davis draws on commonplace forms-police blotters, garden almanacs, Sunday sermons, horoscopes, and diaries-to convey the rich rhythms of life in Varennes. From the ladies in the old-folks' home to trappers, lawyers, teachers, ministers, drug addicts-even the dogs and cats, beavers and bears-she peoples this novel with astonishingly vivid beings. The extraordinary comes to visit an ordinary town.

"A delightful, surprise-filled narrative: Davis's best yet."-Kirkus Review(starred review)

"Cosmic in her vision, provocative and comic in her storytelling, Kathryn Davis draws on sources as diverse as quantum physics and tales of saints and miracles and makes place a key element in her exploratory fiction."-Booklist (starred review)

"Never has Davis' prose seemed more effortless...The Thin Place is a bright, shimmering book."-Chicago Sun-Times