Jane, Divided

Just before Christmas, Jane Sperling is headed from Montana to Texas, to the hometown she once abandoned, in a car she doesn't fully trust, for a job that's a leap of faith and the only line she has on a better life for herself and her eleven-year-old daughter, Claire.

In Texas, Jane puts a long-dormant teaching credential to use at the middle school she once attended. She navigates a fraught relationship with her widower father and the growing pains of her daughter. In an old place that's new again, there are kids to get to know (including a temperamental and brilliant young man named Roderick); colleagues to fit in with, among them a young, popular teacher who takes an interest in Jane; and Claire's yearning to go back to Montana.

Jane fights against her memories and her circumstances as she tries to find her footing. Through her current challenges and the letters she wrote to her daughter as her marriage was failing, Jane takes the measure of the lives she's trying to imbue with hope: That she really can go home again and find something, that she can keep Claire close and still let her grow, that she can forgive her father as he fades away, and perhaps that she can even open herself to love she has never believed in.

The latest from award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster (Northward Dreams, And It Will Be a Beautiful Life, 600 Hours of Edward) lives and breathes in the suburbs of North Texas, the land of Lancaster's youth, and finds a typical family, trying to find a way forward against the injuries of their past.