“Spin­ning at the Edges is, sim­ply, a mar­vel.” — Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of The Known World

From the author of the acclaimed As Close to Us as Breath­ing, a cap­ti­vat­ing nov­el steeped in his­to­ry, reveal­ing the bonds of fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty, and the heal­ing pow­ers hid­den inside bro­ken hearts.

For much of her adult life Ruth Pearl has lived in the small New Eng­land town of Wells, Con­necti­cut, on the shore of Lake Topaqua. Decades back, when she was four­teen, she and her par­ents fled Ger­man-occu­pied Ams­ter­dam after the mur­der of her beloved old­er sis­ter Sophia, and in the wake of such loss, Ruth has long tak­en com­fort in the nat­ur­al beau­ty of her lake view.

But in the win­ter of 2000, Ruth’s neigh­bor builds an addi­tion to his home that blocks Ruth’s view, a dis­rup­tion of her peace that sparks fear that her tumul­tuous past is hap­pen­ing again.

One day, seek­ing solace, Ruth heads out for a cathar­tic skate on the lake only to spot a boy in the dis­tance falling through the ice. Also wit­ness­ing this event is Judge Arthur Cantrell, by chance in Wells that day to avoid the con­se­quences of a failed romance.
Togeth­er, Ruth and Arthur save Ian Lima, a despair­ing six­teen-year-old, and over the days to come, as Ruth and Arthur help Ian heal, they find them­selves heal­ing too. Soon enough, this turn of events begins to impact Ruth’s daugh­ter, Ian’s moth­er, and even Arthur’s love interest.

In Spin­ning at the Edges, Eliz­a­beth Polin­er, a mas­ter­ful sto­ry­teller, seam­less­ly inter­weaves the lives of a rich cast of char­ac­ters liv­ing in two his­tor­i­cal time peri­ods — Amer­i­ca 2000, marked by a con­tro­ver­sial pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, and Nether­lands 1941, marked by ris­ing fas­cism — to tell an unfor­get­table sto­ry about how the past haunts the present, how shar­ing pain heals, and how love — and even democ­ra­cy — are frag­ile con­cepts in a chang­ing, spin­ning world.