In 1980s rural Maine, Indigenous 14-year-old Molly and her father live off the land along the Penobscot Bay that was stolen from their ancestors. An overseas conglomerate tries to open a factory that would bring jobs to the area but pollute the environment. Molly burns down the building, sends a statement to the press and escapes into the woods. Molly's statement gets published in the Lowering Days newspaper, sowing division within the community and a violent clash between families in this achingly beautiful and bittersweet family saga.
The first op-ed Falon Ames publishes, defending Molly's reasons for burning down the factory, brings death threats to the tiny newspaper's office. Falon is unapologetic about the uproar, causing financial troubles for her husband Arnaud's struggling boat-building business. Locals vilify Falon, until Lyman Creel, local fisherman and next-door neighbor to the Ames family, shoots at a starving Molly when he catches her tampering with his lobster traps, causing community anger to shift toward Lyman and his family. Lyman demands that Falon publish his version of events. When Falon refuses, Lyman's actions escalate tensions that lead to devastating results for stubborn, good people who can't help hurting each other over misperceptions of a shared and deeply wounding past.
Gregory Brown's protagonist-narrator, David "Almy" Ames, claims his mother, Falon, named her newspaper the Lowering Days after her great-grandfather's term for lowering a body into the earth at funerals. He also recalls her saying the name refers to boats being birthed into the sea. The author poetically blends the opposing concepts into an absorbing, elemental story of human existence. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer