The Round Barn (Hardscrabble Books)

In a deft and satisfying debut, Suzi Wizowaty skillfully weaves multiple story lines, told in a variety of voices, around the acquisition and relocation of a historic round barn by a museum in northern Vermont. With sympathy and insight, Wizowaty creates a range of characters--men and women, gay and straight--who wrestle with the consequences of frustrated desires.

They include Tuesday Bailey, chief of buildings and grounds for the museum, who suffers from unrequited love for his cousin and childhood companion Mary, now the wife of the owner of the general store. Mary herself has suffered from a lifelong spiritual yearning, but just as she has settled on dowsing as her life's calling, she is confronted with her own mortality. Tuesday's friend Didi, the museum's public relations coordinator, contemplates an adulterous relationship with a local reporter--a man--at the risk of her happy and stable longtime relationship with her female partner. Didi's eighteen-year-old nephew David arrives for a summer visit, consumed by the sense that his own life has yet to begin but eager for it to do so.

Over the course of the summer, the round barn is repeatedly vandalized, while the museum community is split by a controversial plan to sell off some of its paintings to raise funds. For some of the characters, the summer will also prove a decisive turning point in their long struggle with thwarted dreams.