Idle Curiosity - Tapa dura

A tiny old man dressed in a red-and-white-striped bathrobe stands outside the white clapboard hotel that for ninety years housed the transients of Half Moon. A former farmer, and ex-husband of two very different women, Ed Check surveys the land that used to be his. He thinks about his daughters: the one who stays close to home and who "keeps what she thinks and feels so deep inside her that it's too far from her face to have any effect"; the one who has come home without her husband and is falling for the new optometrist in town, Nelson Alvin (rhymes with ball peen). But how could he know that his youngest daughter, whom he hasn't seen since she was a small child, is currently on her way to delivering him his biggest surprise. She is working her way down a list of "musts" before she can call him: "wait for bruise to clear up / let roots grow out, cut off blond / get two outfits and a suitcase." As lives unravel around him, Ed's age-old practice of looking out for his own is put to the test and earns him a pacemaker. To everyone's surprise however, family ties prove to be longer, and stronger, than expected. Despite their status as "grown-ups" Ed finds his daughters need him now more than ever.

Praise for Martha Bergland's first novel, A Farm under a Lake:

"Bergland's writing is close to perfect pitch. The details, rather than cluttering the story, illuminate it in an almost visionary way.... A Farm under a Lake is full of good things; it's 'embarrassingly' rich with promise of great things to come."--San Francisco Chronicle

"An exquisitely written, wonderfully quirky book that surprises us by being quiet, unassuming, startling, and imaginative."--Hungry Mind Review

"If you ever wondered what was going on in the minds of halter-topped high school girls who hoe soybeans in the countryside or what makes the wives of this nation's farmers tick, spend a few hours with this novel. You will learn more about these women than some of us have figured out in a lifetime of living with them."--New York Times Book Review