TWO FACES OF THE MOON

Every summer, the author leaves her suburban Long Island home to spend time alone in the isolated wilderness of Bobs Lake, in Ontario, Canada. Accompanied only by two dogs for companionship, she stays in a simple log cabin on a small island she inherited from her father, Philip, who died when she was just a teenager. Her time here is usually spent enjoying the wilderness, but one year she had to interrupt her time as her “island self” to visit her ailing mother, Dorothea, in a nearby care home. Dementia had already claimed her mother’s mind, and her overall health was in rapid decline; her dire condition led McGrath to “unravel the puzzle of [her] relationship with [her] parents.” Back at the cabin, McGrath’s memories of her father reveal a troubled man—an alcoholic World War I veteran whose experiences as a soldier birthed a deep, silent rage (“There were times when he seemed to be looking for a fight, setting us up as the enemy, defying us to love him. I’ve read that survival of war can be simply a continuation of psychic endurance. He must have longed to surrender”). This memoir nimbly captures the duality of nature within its pages, showcasing the beauty of ospreys bathing or kingfishers hunting while never sugarcoating the threat of a sudden thunderstorm or the unexpected dangers of the lake she loves (black-and-white photographs of the location are included throughout). The book subtly explores the abrasive patriarchal expectations placed on women, contrasting them with the strength and endurance of the mothers who came before to scrape out a place for themselves in the harsh wilderness. The exuberant ruminations on the natural world have at their center a reckoning with the grief that comes with the loss of a parent and their often unnoticed influence on those left behind.

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