Afloat

It is the summer of 2000, and Bell, a student from Minnesota, is employed as a waitress at an elite restaurant on Mackinac Island – a unique island resort on Lake Michigan teeming with expensive yachts, horse-drawn carriages, smoked whitefish, Republicans, bicycles, top-shelf vodka and inspiring new relationships. Forty years later, in a parallel narrative, Bell is stranded in her St Paul home with oversized hailstones destroying the city outside. While clearing away the belongings of a lifetime, her mind keeps drifting back to Mackinac while she awaits the arrival of a man from that deceptively idyllic Michigan summer. Afloat offers a refreshing and exquisitely distilled exploration of North American material and spiritual values, and a riveting story of loyalty, betrayal and survival.