Tin Camp Road

by Ellen Airgood

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Chosen as the Library of Congress's "Great Reads from Great Places" Michigan selection for 2023

"Moving and brave." —People

Set against the wide open beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a wise, big hearted novel in which a young single mother and her ten-year-old daughter stand up to the trials of rural poverty and find the community they need in order to survive.

Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter Skye have always been each other's everything. The pair live on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children, and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need?

One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and, without any warning, they are pushed farther to the margins. Suddenly it feels like the independence that has defined them is a liability. And when a dangerous incident threatens to separate them, Laurel and Skye must forever choose--will they leave the place they love and the hardscrabble life they've built to move closer to civilization, or risk everything to embrace the emptiness and wildness that has defined them?

What follows is an uplifting, profoundly moving story about a mother and daughter fighting for each other, against all odds, as they learn to build community and foster the resilience that will keep them alive.

Release date: August 3, 2021

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

One

Laurel Hill knew that a part of her would die if she ever had to leave Lake Superior. Its lapping was a heartbeat, one connected to her own. Without the sight and sound of it landing onshore and departing again, the turning of the water as constant as the earth's orbit, her soul would fade and tear, a sheet left out on the line too long.

She tapped the handle of her cleaning cart. The sky was as clear as a polished window today. The water riffled under the August sun; the air smelled of sand and lake and something else, something she'd never been able to pin down. Maybe it was Canada. Alaska, even. Maybe stray molecules of distant forests and mountains and prairies-cities, too-sailed down to Gallion on the northwest wind that almost always blew. Or maybe it was the smell of bigness, of eternity. Whatever it was, it was essential. She breathed deep to bring it into every corner of herself, then pushed on toward room 15, her sixth of the day at the Lakeshore Inn.

The cart's wheels grabbed at the parking lot's gravel and veered it off course. She yanked it straight to hop it onto the walk and trundled forward again. When she knocked on 15's sand-pitted door, no one answered, so she bumped in backward, dragging the cart along with her.

Inside, a backpack slouched beside the television, a framed photograph stood on the nightstand, and a bath towel lay folded on the sink. A note was tented on top of it, written on the envelope Paula Hoover gave the maids to leave out for tips. Dear Housekeeping. I'm sorry about the coffee I spilled. Thank you-miigwech-for your service. The room is very pleasant and clean; I have enjoyed it.

Laurel lifted the envelope's flap and stared at the twenty that lay inside. Tips of any kind were rare, but one this large was unprecedented. She nodded at the bill to welcome it to her always-too-small collection, tucked it in her jeans pocket along with the note-you rarely got thanked for doing work like this-and turned to the bed, pulling the coverlet off and tugging the sheets from the corners of the mattress. Then she stopped and took the envelope back out of her pocket. She picked up the pen Paula had them leave beside the phones-Compliments of Lakeshore Inn, Your Upper Peninsula Happy Place since 1967-and wrote, You are very welcome, thank you! below the original message. She reread her own. A period would have been better than an exclamation mark, but she propped it on the backpack anyway.

She was jabbing the vacuum hose into the far corner beneath the bathroom sink when the machine cut off. She jumped and banged her head on the vanity; Rip coughed and said, "Sorry. Wasn't trying to scare you to death."

Laurel rubbed her skull. "It's all right."

Rip had small, neat ears and snapping eyes she'd always suspected saw straight into her. Saw her evasions and the lies she told herself, inspected her failures more closely than she could ever bear to. "I came to tell you, Lydia called. She's not coming in today."

"What? Why?"

"Hungover, I expect."

Laurel almost kept silent, but she'd known Rip since she was a child and her mother cleaned these rooms. He used to give Laurel peppermint sticks out of the candy jars in the gift shop. The October of her eighth birthday, he gave her a kite that hadn't sold all summer because the packaging was torn. She and Mom and Gran took it to the beach and flew it until a gust of wind grabbed it and crumpled it into a broken-winged bird. They still had fun, though; losing the kite wasn't a tragedy. They dropped it in the firepit and used it to light the kindling. Gran made Laurel write Rip a thank-you note the next day, and twenty-two years later that note still lay tucked under the glass on his desktop. Laurel had moved away and returned a dozen times with her mother, but the note was still there. Rip was still Rip, managing the Hoovers' motel like he'd been doing for decades, and Laurel, the real Laurel, was still here, too. She straightened her shoulders. "You should just fire her."

Rip laughed, a single hmmp. "Should I, now?"

"There is no 'just'" was the secret motto of everyone who worked at the Lakeshore. The saying lived in her earliest memories along with the cedary aroma of the inside of Gran's sauna, the song of the peepers ricocheting from the swamps in the spring, the sight of Gran at the stove boiling cranberries or blueberries or any other berry that grew for jam. No just and often no justice. It was a fact life here taught you early and kept on teaching you, no matter how well you thought you'd learned your lesson. Laurel ducked her chin. "Yeah, no, I know better."

"Good. 'Cause if I fire her, who do I replace her with? You have a clone of yourself stashed away? Or else maybe your kid's ready to start working?"

"She's ten, Rip. Ten today."

"Is she." Rip grimaced the way people did when they wanted to convey that time flew without spending breath on the subject. And it did. Gran always insisted it sped faster and faster as you grew older, and at nearly thirty, Laurel knew she'd been right. "Anyway. Lyd's young and chafing at the bit for her life to happen. She'll grow up yet. The question right now is whether you can pick up her slack in the meantime."

"Oh, Rip, I don't think so. I promised Skye I'd be home by three at the latest-we're supposed to spend the day on the beach. All day and half the night. It's the Perseids."

"Is it. Well. 'The best-laid plans of mice and men,' eh? Ask the boss man on that one."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't mean anything."

Rip had a way of sounding final. She had never argued with him and never would; certain truths about yourself you had to accept. "What about Paula? I can't let Skye down."

Rip gave her the lowered-brow look that always made her feel simpleminded. "Mrs. H. has not been gracing this place with her presence overmuch of late, Laurel. Or have you not noticed?"

"I thought she was busy with their house remodel."

"Sure, that's what it is."

Laurel hunched her shoulders and kept quiet. No need to further expose her cluelessness. Rip ran his eyes over the room: pine-paneled walls, a bureau bearing an old-style television on its scarred shoulders, the bed made up with a pastel-flowered duvet. His gaze lingered on a water stain on the ceiling. The Lakeshore was not in perfect condition, but it was nowhere near as run-down as the Breakers up on the main street, so it was always busy in the season. And the Hoovers painted it at least once a decade and replaced the mattresses now and then, so in this town, on the northernmost rim of Michigan, it was respectable, or it had been. Since the county paved the back road from McAllaster a few years ago, the visitors came faster and thicker and were more demanding-more demanding, less appreciative, and in a bigger hurry. Not all of them, but enough that Laurel veered quicker than ever away from strangers. Rip knocked on the doorframe. "What do you think?"

Laurel twisted her hair around her hand. Her grandmother had called it her crowning glory but mostly Laurel kept it in a low ponytail, out of her way and less apt to call notice to itself. Long, curling, the color of cider vinegar, it was the hair of a storybook princess and didn't fit the rest of her: thin and angular, strong lines drawn quick. "I can't, Rip."

A look raced over his face, anger or annoyance or only weariness, but he shrugged. "I can't make you." Laurel stayed silent, unsure, and he brightened. "I'd throw in a pizza. You could call it in to Belle's, pick it up on your way home."

Laurel smiled. "You wouldn't have to do that."

"Call it a birthday present for the little one."

Laurel nibbled at a thumbnail but yanked her hand away. A habit she was trying to break. "Who will you get if I don't do it?"

Rip rubbed at his eyes. "Me, I guess."

"You don't want to be cleaning all these!" Rip was trim and brisk-moving, fit for his age, but he'd had a back surgery a decade ago and Laurel knew he had to be careful.

"I've done it before, it won't kill me." A grin flashed beneath his mustache. "Any luck, I'll find a quarter behind the headboard."

Laurel glanced outside. The sun bore down; the water glittered. She nodded before she could think better of it. "I'll call Skye. There's plenty of day left."

Laurel paced the three-foot path the phone cord allowed while she waited for Skye to pick up. At last, there was a breathless "'Lo?"

"Skye? Baby, where were you?"

"Out on the patio. There's a frog, an eastern gray tree frog."

"Oh, a frog, that's great, I haven't seen a frog in a long time."

"Yeah, but it's a tree frog, Mom. Tree frogs belong in trees, and it's sitting on the cement in the sun. And he's so little. He's tiny."

"How did you see him?"

"I was out there reading and I just . . . noticed him."

Skye had noticed their dog, Harper, this same way. They were climbing Plank Hill one day late in April, going quick as they could on the ice. It was one of the first days after they'd left Sean's, and Laurel was trying to distract them from their sorrow with fresh air and movement. Halfway to the corner, Skye pulled her to a stop and stood statue-still. Her eyes lit on an animal where it lay huddled in a drainage pipe the county hadn't installed yet. She moved straight toward him, stopped a few feet away, and squatted on her heels with her hand held out. "Oh, Mr. Dog," she said, grave as a train wreck. "You look like you've seen hard times."

When he lifted his chin, Laurel saw pale blue eyes, bright with smarts and maybe fury at the way the world had treated him. She moved to hold Skye back, but Skye was already scooting closer. "Oh, Mr. Dog. Dear Mr. Dog." She fluttered her fingertips, patient as a mountain, and after a moment the dog dragged himself from the pipe. Mud chunked his coat; one rear leg twisted beneath him. Laurel's stomach churned. She stepped backward, but Skye beamed and nodded encouragement as if he was a shy child going onstage for a piano recital. He limped to her and they studied each other. Then he licked her palm once, the seal on a covenant.

"This poor frog is out of his element," Skye said now. "That's not good."

"No, it doesn't sound good."

"It isn't. I looked-"

Skye cut herself off and Laurel filled in the sentence. Skye had looked the frog up on the internet, which meant she'd broken Laurel's express rule not to leave the yard except in case of a five-alarm emergency and had run down the block to use Lori Trevor's computer. In an ideal world, that would have been fine. But the world wasn't ideal. It was beautiful, amazing, and complicated.

"Okay, you looked it up. Then what?"

Skye huffed in relief. "I read all about him and I'm afraid he's dying. He's very still. And very gray."

"Didn't you say he's a gray tree frog?"

"Yeah, but not this gray. You have to be careful about moving them, so I didn't. I put a bowl of water down and made shade with tree branches. I put them over him like a tepee."

"You didn't break branches off anything, did you?" Harv Duke was particular about his rental's appearance, yard and all, though not so choosy about how the house actually functioned.

"Um, I might've. Off the maple. But it's not noticeable. Not very."

Laurel closed her eyes.

Skye breathed in and out in Laurel's ear. "I killed some flies and put them by him, too. He hasn't taken them yet."

"Ah. Well. I'm sorry, and I wish I was there to help. And that's the thing, it's why I called." Laurel sank onto the bed and picked up the framed photograph. Two women and a child gazed at her from their picnic spot on a beach; she stared back at them while she explained.

"Mom! No!" A bang echoed. Skye had punched the tabletop, a new and unwelcome habit. "You worked late last night. It's all you do, and it stinks. It stinks even worse since we moved out of Sean's. I hate sitting at Belle's all night while you do the dishes."

In the photo, sun cascaded over the women and girl and reflected off the water behind them; their matching smiles proclaimed they didn't have a care in the world. Laurel knew that couldn't be so. Everyone had cares. Everyone, everywhere. Still, she closed her eyes. It was hard to look at lives that seemed so much easier than her own, and she saw so many of them. People on vacation, people eating every meal out without blinking at the cost, people abandoning the remains of those meals in their fridges as if they were nothing. People with cars that started every time they put the key in the ignition, cars that didn't even have keys, they were so up-to-the-minute. Laurel didn't begrudge anyone these conveniences-she didn't think she did-but she hated to feel herself falling so short in comparison. "I'm sorry. It's summer. You know how summer is."

Skye sniffed.

"I work so I can take good care of you."

"I know."

Grudging words, but they made Laurel straighten. "I promise I'll go fast. Fast as a whirlwind. We'll have all kinds of day left, and we'll stay out so late watching those stars of ours, you won't even believe it."

Skye sniffed again and Laurel twisted the phone cord around her hand. She wished she'd told Rip no, but how could she?

"It'll be great, you'll see."

Skye sighed. "Okay."

"And why don't you call Abby in the meantime, see what she's up to?"

"She's still at camp."

Laurel smoothed the bed's coverlet. "That's right. Well. I'll be as quick as I can. And we'll have fun later, I promise."

"Okay."

"I love you, baby."

"I know."

Laurel made her voice firm. "Stay in the house or the backyard. Not the front." In front, strangers-even neighbors-might see her and realize she was home alone. Lori Trevor wouldn't say anything, but someone else might. Even on Railroad Street summer people owned half the houses now.