The Center of Everything: A Novel

by Jamie Harrison

Overview

Set against the wild beauty of Montana as a woman attempts to heal from a devastating accident, this generational saga from the award-winning author of The Widow Nash is a heartfelt examination of how the deep bonds of family echo throughout our lives.

For Polly, the small town of Livingston, Montana, is a land charmed by raw, natural beauty and a close network of family that extends back generations. But the summer of 2002 finds Polly at a crossroads: a recent head injury has scattered her perception of the present, bringing to the surface long-forgotten events. As Polly's many relatives arrive for a family reunion during the Fourth of July holiday, a beloved friend goes missing on the Yellowstone River. Search parties comb the river as carefully as Polly combs her mind, and over the course of one fateful week, Polly arrives at a deeper understanding of herself and her larger-than-life relatives. Weaving together the past and the present, from the shores of Long Island Sound to the landscape of Montana, The Center of Everything examines with profound insight the memories and touchstones that make up a life and what we must endure along the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640092358
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	01/12/2021
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	936,076
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jamie Harrison, who has lived in Montana with her family for more than thirty years, has worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor, and is the author of The Center of Everything, The Widow Nash, and the four Jules Clement/Blue Deer mysteries: The Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and Blue Deer Thaw. She was awarded the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award for The Widow Nash, and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/19/2020

An undercurrent of tragedy runs through Harrison’s brilliant latest (after The Widow Nash), about the effects of a brain injury on a 42-year-old Montana woman. Three months after a bicycle accident, Polly Schuster suffers from migraines and short-term memory loss, and has trouble concentrating on work at her husband’s restaurant. After family friend Ariel goes missing during a Yellowstone River kayak trip, Polly tells her mother, Jane, she remembers seeing four dead bodies by the time she was nine. Jane insists these are just “photographs turned into memories” after her accident, and gradually Polly begins to grasp why Jane is trying to mislead her. As Polly grows suspicious about Ariel’s disappearance, her world cracks open with revelations about the truth behind her family’s tragic past. A series of chapters set in 1968 reveal the sources of Polly’s memories, covering her childhood spent in Long Island living with her renowned archaeologist great-grandfather who moved east decades earlier, after Jane’s mother died in an accident on the Yellowstone River, and an incident involving a suicidal private plane crash. Against the backdrop of Polly’s family history and the author’s exploration of the vagaries of the human mind, Harrison plumbs complex family relationships and sheds insight on the power of memories and how they shape her characters. Harrison shines with passages of vivid imagery as Polly gains an added dimension of perception from looking at art and photographs. Readers will find themselves wishing this won’t end. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

32nd Annual Reading the West Book Awards Nominee
A Bibliolifestyle Most Anticipated Read of the Year

"It's so character driven and you really feel as though it's not a made up story, that these are real people, and that you are getting a glimpse into their lives." —Nancy Pearl

"This gorgeous novel is well worth your time." —People

"A meticulously crafted, graceful novel." —O, the Oprah Magazine 

"[A] wonderful cast of interesting characters . . . And it is really the way Polly thinks—about her children and her childhood, her memories and imaginings, her immediate circumstances and her place in the world, even the toothsome dishes she prepares (with occasional lapses lately)—that makes this book so engaging . . . Carrying us along, Polly conjures a richly textured, often lovely life of everyday loss and longing and endless speculation, where 'everything goes missing but everything lives on, at least for a while, in the small kingdom of your head.' Indeed, Harrison’s novel takes the unreliable narrator to a whole new place: in short, to the center of everything." —Ellen Akins, The Washington Post

"Searching for a first book club book of 2021? Look no further . . . Weaving together the past and the present, The Center of Everything examines the memories and touchstones that make up a life, and what we we all endure along the way." —Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow

"Gorgeous . . . Harrison’s writing is as lush as the landscapes themselves . . . Harrison’s writing shimmers like light-sparkled water, and it’s full of lush sensory details." —Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle

"One of those works that ages well, that offers up new surprises with each subsequent reading. There’s an almost unimaginable sweetness as well as a sense of longing suffusing this new novel . . . A rarity." —Steve Whitton, The Anniston Star

"Wise and warmhearted . . . In The Center of Everything, Jamie Harrison has created a world so total, so real, so personal, that the reader, on finishing it, is missing it already." —Sarah Shoemaker, Washington Independent Review of Books

"Despite various mysteries and suspicious deaths in this story about a Montana woman uncovering secrets past and present, Harrison wisely concentrates less on plot twists than on exploring the trickiness of memory where love and family are concerned . . . Through small moments, particularly shared meals and drinks, the reader becomes intimately involved in Polly's inner life and falls in love with a vividly portrayed Montana devoid of Western clichés. A sharply intelligent, warmhearted embrace of human imperfection—the kind of book that invites a second reading." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Brilliant . . . Harrison plumbs complex family relationships and sheds insight on the power of memories and how they shape her characters. Harrison shines with passages of vivid imagery as Polly gains an added dimension of perception from looking at art and photographs. Readers will find themselves wishing this won’t end." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Lyrical, profound . . . Recommended for book clubs and fans of complex, literary fiction." —Booklist

"In this exquisitely nuanced, beautifully constructed novel, Harrison draws the reader into young Polly’s filtered understanding of her world, rich with happily married couples, vs. the uncertain reality of the adult Polly, coping with memory loss while slowly untangling shocking family secrets. A magnificent gem." —Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 11/01/2020

In the summer of 2002, 42-year-old Polly is in the middle of a multigenerational, crisis-rich situation in Livingston, MT. Polly struggles with the after effects of a traumatic brain injury with the full support of her devoted husband, Ned; she and her family are also planning the upcoming 90th birthday of Great-Aunt Maude while a search party of townspeople continues to look for Ariel, the babysitter of Polly's children, who was in a boating accident and is now presumed dead. As the narrative deftly moves back and forth between Polly's current troubles and her childhood years in 1960s New York, rife with half-understood adult tragedies that engulfed her beloved grandparents, parents, and best friend, Edmund, old traumas resurface with stunning parallels. VERDICT In this exquisitely nuanced, beautifully constructed novel, Harrison ("Jules Clement" mystery series) draws the reader into young Polly's filtered understanding of her world, rich with happily married couples, vs. the uncertain reality of the adult Polly, coping with memory loss while slowly untangling shocking family secrets. A magnificent gem.—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Library Journal

Jane Oppenheimer's narration is thoughtful and appropriate in this story about memories and family. Polly has recently had an accident resulting in short-term memory issues. Trying to regain her independence, she begins to analyze what she remembers. Bouncing between past and current events, listeners will wonder along with her what is real and what has been imagined. In Oppenheimer's portrayal of Polly as a 42-year-old, listeners hear the struggle to hold on to thoughts and memories in her steady pacing and unemotional tone. As a 7-year-old character, Oppenheimer allows wonder and perplexity to shine through. In the brief moments of dialogue, Oppenheimer adds just enough nuance to give all the characters clear voices. S.K.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile

★ 2020-03-15
Despite various mysteries and suspicious deaths in this story about a Montana woman uncovering secrets past and present, Harrison wisely concentrates less on plot twists than on exploring the trickiness of memory where love and family are concerned.

Over the course of a week in the summer of 2002, 42-year-old Polly, a married mother of two and sometime editor who helps her husband run his restaurant in Livingston, Montana, finds herself coping with several crises at once. Since a recent bicycle accident, Polly has struggled with memory problems, remembering too much as well as too little. As she prepares for a large family reunion to celebrate her great aunt Maude’s 90th birthday, disjointed images of the past haunt her, and arguments with her mother, Jane—a highly successful historian who's written about "the eternal nature of stories"—about whether some of Polly’s memories may be false, have exacerbated her fear of losing her mind. Meanwhile, her children’s babysitter, Ariel, is missing and presumed drowned after a kayaking mishap. The tragedy involves Polly and the tight-knit Livingston community first in a search for Ariel, then in mourning, then in uncomfortable suspicions surrounding Ariel’s kayaking companion and apparent boyfriend. Polly’s emotional turmoil is the center of the novel as she fixates not only on Ariel’s death, but also on what exactly happened in 1968, "when her world blew up.” Another layer of understanding comes in chapters in which the 1968 events, extremes of joy and tragedy, are seen through Polly’s limited 7-year-old perspective. The result is a kaleidoscope of facts and recollections that reveal emotional as well as factual truth only in tantalizing fragments. Some mysteries remain unsolved; others Polly solves, sometimes to her dismay. Through small moments, particularly shared meals and drinks, the reader becomes intimately involved in Polly’s inner life and falls in love with a vividly portrayed Montana devoid of Western clichés.

A sharply intelligent, warmhearted embrace of human imperfection—the kind of book that invites a second reading.

Kirkus Reviews