By Tory Henwood Hoenn – St. Martin’s Press, 2025
At 26, Cricket has little to show for her life: she’s a college dropout stuck in a dead-end job, with few meaningful relationships. She long since turned her back on her small, Adirondack hometown, but on a whim, she tells her older sister she’ll move back to care for their father, Arthur, whose memory loss has made independent living impossible. Her sister—the “sensible one”—is poised to take a job abroad and planned to place Arthur in memory care.
Arthur, once merely affable, now spins stories more vivid and compelling than ever. Rather than dismiss his uncanny premonitions, Cricket allows him the grace to offer advice to anyone who asks. Soon, Arthur is known as “the Oracle,” drawing visitors from far and wide for consultations. When one guest—Cricket’s on-again, off-again boss—tries to monetize these sessions, Cricket and Arthur’s friends push back. As Arthur’s gift breathes new life into the sleepy forest town, Cricket reckons with her own role in an accident that drove her away from the lake.
The novel is charming and often funny, but what sets it apart is how it invites readers, through Cricket’s curiosity, to reconsider Alzheimer’s in unexpected ways. When so much is lost, can something wonderful still remain?
