"The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass." A great opening line for an interesting book, a love letter to a town in New York that curiously resembles Cooperstown.

The story begins as Willie (Wilhemina) Upton returns home with her tail between her legs and a fetus in her belly. She is running from a disasterous affair with her graduate school professor and dissertation advisor (one that starts on an archeological dig in Alaska but ends when Willie tries to run over his wife with her car). But the trauma is not over. When Willie shows up on the doorstep of Vi, her ex-hippie/now recently-turned-religious mother, who still lives in Templeton, Vi reveals a long-kept secret. Willie was not conceived in a haze of drugs and sex out in San Francisco but rather someone in their small town is the father. However, Vi won't say who it is; Willie must figure it out.

In order to deal with her present (and find a way to the future), Willie must come to terms with her own history. The novel follows Willie's exploration into the past--her ancestors' and the town of Templeton's--and into how both these pasts are intertwined. These histories of the dead are revealed in multiple ways--long lost letters, journal entries, present day ghosts, etc. With each new piece of information, Willie adds branches to her family tree and this growing complexity is reflected in the illustrations between chapters.

Though this book didn't rock my world, I loved how tied it was to place--how it suggests that the ghosts of the past still linger in forgotten corners of any town and are simply waiting to be discovered.