Stillwater

In the early 1980s, twelve-year-old Clara Mae Benton dreams of nothing more than ice skates, her father's laughter on the cold Saskatchewan air, and the simple joy of being a girl growing up in a place where winter never fully loosens its grip.

But one frozen morning changes everything.

After a tragic accident on the pond her father tried to clear for her birthday, Clara's world fractures. Grief settles over their farmhouse like another layer of frost, and the family she knew becomes a landscape she no longer recognizes. Stillwater is a town that remembers everything—and forgets nothing—and Clara learns too early that some wounds follow a person long after the ice has melted.

Years later, Clara returns home, carrying the quiet ache of a life spent trying to outrun what happened on that pond. The town is older, quieter, and full of ghosts she's tried to leave behind. But Stillwater has a way of calling its people back—especially the ones who never truly healed.

As she reconnects with Jack Harris, a steadfast neighbor who once adored her from afar, Clara must decide whether the past will define her… or whether she can build something tender and true in the ruins of what was lost.

Stillwater is a haunting, hopeful novel about grief, memory, and the stubborn, steady love that rises in the cracks. For readers who love small-town stories, emotional women's fiction, and slow, deeply human healing arcs, this is a tale that lingers long after the last page.

Sometimes the place that broke you is the only place that can put you back together.