A new novel looks with bright eyes at the angels in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "It is said that angels come as thoughts, as visions, as dreams, as animals, as the light on the water or in clouds and rainbows, and as people too," Sophy Burnham has written. Nancy Willard would certainly agree with her. Her new novel Sister Water is awash with angels.
Jessie sees her first angel at age 15 in the middle of a cyclone which blows off the shingles of her house in Drowning Bear, Wisconsin. Many years later, she settles down in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Henry Woolman. He runs a museum containing local artifacts and has an indoor stream in his front room.
When her husband dies, the museum falls into disrepair. Jessie's daughter Martha advises selling the whole works to a businessman who wants to replace it with a shopping mall. Jessie's recently widowed daughter Ellen is against the idea.
Sister Water is filled with mysteries and magical moments where dreams, angels, and wings are as real as wood and five dollar bills. Jessie in her old age has great memory lapses and needs a caretaker. Her daughters hire Sam Theopolis to look after their mother. Sam believes in angels and may be one himself. He has wings tattoed on his shoulders and loves to sing "Hark the Herald." His cat is called Everpresent Fullness and his favorite joke goes: "What did the Buddhist say to the hotdog vendor? 'Make me one with everything'."
Willard's forte is that she loves these idiosyncratic characters and keeps us wondering about them as they confront death, grief, and back to back troubles. Angels help pull them through these difficulties and they come out on the other side shining.