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Leslie
Goetsch's "Back Creek"
 It’s
the summer of 1975. Eighteen-year-old Grace Barnett knows
she should be preparing to leave for college in September.
But a strange Memorial Day boating accident on the creek near
her Virginia home—she’s the only witness to the
apparent suicide—kicks off a series of events that will
define her family’s future as well as her emerging view
of life.
On the very day of the victim’s funeral,
Grace’s older sister, Lillian, absent from the family
for the past five years, suddenly reappears. Unfortunately,
it is also the day Grace’s mother chooses to quietly
walk out on her family, leaving Grace to act as the mediator
between her prodigal sister and her badly wounded father.
As the summer wears on, Grace finds herself thinking less
about college and more about how to mend the rifts in her
family. She turns to her neighbor, Cal, a recently returned
Vietnam vet, to help sort through her problems. After weathering
her sister’s unexpected return and pregnancy, her father’s
budding alcoholism, and Cal’s war-induced neurosis,
Grace decides to set off to rural North Carolina with the
intention of bringing her mother back home. On her return,
without her mother, a rare but powerful hurricane is pummeling
Back Creek, endangering Grace—and everyone (and everything)
she loves.
From this stormy and event-filled summer, Grace emerges a
changed young woman. She discovers that, by relating and thinking
through the life stories of those around her, she can begin
to understand herself more fully. And having come to realize
the healing power of telling her own tale, she learns that
she’s finally ready to leave the comfort of the creek—at
least long enough to begin her studies at the University of
Virginia.
Grace’s story, like the Romantic novels she’s
obsessed with, is layered, full of symbolism, and rife with
issues for discussion, making it a near-perfect coming-of-age
story for high school students. And thus, like the Jane Austen
and Bronte sisters’ classics Grace so admires, Back
Creek is ideal for classroom use at any school—public,
parochial, or independent.
To order “Back Creek”
Click the button below or to purchase your book(s)
by phone, call Bancroft’s toll-free number at 800-637-7377.
If, for some reason, no live person answers, leave your message
in the Voicemail address for “Ordering,” and someone
will respond within 24 hours.
About Leslie Goetsch
 Back
Creek is the first novel written by Leslie Goetsch, a
graduate of Duke and Johns Hopkins universities, and English
department chair at an independent girls’ school in
Baltimore (Roland Park Country Day). Although she currently
lives in Baltimore with her husband and two children (and
has for the past 25 years), she’s a native of Virginia,
having grown up in an area much like Back Creek, one of hundreds
of deep tributaries that cut through the state. Awarded a
Maryland State Arts Council grant to develop Back Creek, she’s
now at work on her second book—what she calls a “coming-of-middle-age
novel.”
Read praise for
the book.
To order “Back Creek”
Click the button below or to purchase your book(s)
by phone, call Bancroft’s toll-free number at 800-637-7377.
If, for some reason, no live person answers, leave your message
in the Voicemail address for “Ordering,” and someone
will respond within 24 hours.
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