Mary Margaret Miller's family has called Miller's Valley home for hundreds of years. Everyone knows little Mimi, as she's called, by name. She's grown up in the shadow of older brothers Eddie and Tommy. She's risen early to help her father with farm chores. She has observed her mother's knowing ways; Miriam, a nurse, always seems to know what's happening before anyone else.

So when a government official arrives to tell residents that the land they call home is destined to become a reservoir, Mimi isn't pleased. She knows the valley has its problems: After a heavy rain, residents are often forced to dry out their homes and throw out items damaged by the rising water. But the Pennsylvania valley is home.

In Miller's Valley, bestselling novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen offers a textured portrayal of small-town life. Mimi's desire to understand her family and the place she calls home begins in the 1960s and evolves over the decades. She's young when talk of flooding the valley begins, but she's also bright. With a teacher's encouragement, Mimi takes on a science research project. As she delves into the area's history, Mimi begins to understand the reality the valley faces. But her family remains a mystery in many ways. 

Every Quindlen novel seems to reveal the author's deft storytelling skill in new ways. Miller's Valley is a gentle story that unfolds slowly and invites the reader to savor each page. It is a tale to get lost in.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Personal in an astute kind of way, whether she's writing Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary or No. 1 New York Times best-selling fiction and nonfiction, Quindlen seems like just the author to write a novel tracing the arc of one woman's life from her teenage years in the roiling Sixties through love, marriage, work, and family until today. Mimi Miller starts out in the fictional town of Miller's Valley, close by the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania, and who knows where she will end.

In the 1960s, the residents of Miller's Valley, a small Pennsylvania town that has seen more than its share of flooding, are being pressured by government officials to accept eminent domain, move out, and watch their town fill with water for a fancy new recreation area. Mimi Miller is a bright, independent teenager with a gift for science who's read the geologists' reports and understands the dark lies hidden beneath the promises of modern living. Her fracturing, strong-minded family is torn. Brother Tom, once a likable high school troublemaker, has returned from Vietnam a ruined man. Her Aunt Ruth, trapped by her own secrets, hasn't left the small house on the Miller property for years. Mimi's parents are divided; her nurse mother accepts the inevitable, while her farmer father can't imagine life anywhere else. Yet it's Mimi who holds them all together at no small cost to her own future. VERDICT In this crisply told story of progress, loss, love, deception, loyalty, and grace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Quindlen once again captures her readers' attention from first page to last. [See Prepub Alert, 10/12/15.]—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Quindlen's latest novel, following Still Life with Breadcrumbs, is a moving exploration of family and notions of home. Mimi Miller recounts her life beginning in the 1960s in Miller's Valley, a small Pennsylvania town where her family has been firmly rooted for generations. Government officials warn that a flood could drown the family farm, and Mimi observes her community's reactions while trying to reconcile her own ambitions with her loyalty to home. Her father refuses to relocate, and seeing his stubbornness, Mimi begins to understand her mother's own unrealized dreams. She also wonders about her reclusive aunt, who lives in a small house on their property and never ventures outside. She watches as her brother, Tommy, tries to escape a feeling of stagnancy by enlisting in the military, only to find himself more trapped than before. Meanwhile, she forges her own escapes into school, romance, and sex. Though the pacing is somewhat uneven, Quindlen's prose is crisp and her insights resonant. This coming-of-age story is driven as much by the fully realized characters as it is by the astute ideas about progress and place. (Apr.)