Down from Cascom Mountain: A Novel

Ann Joslin Williams grew up observing the craft of writing; her father, Thomas Williams, was a National Book Award-winning novelist. Many of his stories were set in a fictional corner of New Hampshire that closely mirrored the landscape outside their door: the town of Leah, and nearby Cascom Mountain, a presence of grace and mystery. With her debut novel, Ann Joslin Williams proves herself a formidably talented novelist in her own right, paying tribute to her father by setting it in the same fictional world—the New Hampshire he imagined and she has always known.

In Down from Cascom Mountain, Mary Hall, newly wed, brings her husband to settle in the rural New Hampshire of her youth, to fix up the house she grew up in and reconnect to the land that defined her, with all its beauty and danger. But on a day-hike up nearby Cascom Mountain, she watches helplessly as her husband falls to his death. As she struggles with her sudden grief, Mary finds new friendships—with Callie and Tobin, teenagers on the mountain club's crew, and with Ben, the gentle fire watchman. All are haunted by their own losses, but they find ways to restore hope in one another, holding firmly as they navigate the rugged terrain of the unknown and unknowable, and love lost and found.