A tale of two sisters over seventy years that recovers the vibrant and unforgettable voice of Beverly Jensen In 1916, Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick-a hardscrabble world of potato farms and lobster traps, rough men, hard work, and baffling beauty. From and "Gone, and " the heartbreaking story of their mother's medical crisis in childbirth, to the darkly comic and "Wake, and " which follows the grown siblings' catastrophic efforts to escort their father, and "Wild Bill and " Hillock's body to his funeral, the stories of Idella and Avis offer a compelling and wry vision of two remarkable women. The vivid cast includes Idella's philandering husband Edward, her bewilderingly difficult mother-in-law- and Avis, whose serial romantic disasters never quell her irrepressible spirit. Jensen's work evokes a time gone by and reads like an instant American classic. Beverly Jensen died of cancer at the age of forty-nine without publishing her work. Since her death, her fiction has been championed by a dedicated group of supporters, including Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.