Mirror Lake brilliantly explores life, death, love, and loss against the backdrop of rural Vermont and the drama of its seasons. Nathan Carter, a man in his twenties, moves from Boston to Eden, Vermont, following the death of his father and the end of yet another failed romance. When Carter's Jeep goes off the road in a snowstorm, seventy-nine-year-old Wallace Fiske nurses him back to health and the two become unlikely friends. Wallace begins to tell Nathan his story, a love story he was prepared to take to the grave with him. It is a tale of passion, of obsession, and ultimately, of tragedy. Along the way, Nathan, suspecting that Wallace is not telling him the whole truth, sets out to discover for himself what happened here at the edge of this small mountain lake fifty years before. In the process, Nathan not only discovers Wallace's dark secret, but also finds himself transformed by the experience, leading to an unforgettable conclusion. The novel unfolds between each man's present and past, and reveals the loves and passions that have defined their lives. Mirror Lake is a brilliant and suspenseful first novel about love, marriage, friendship, and betrayal. Bret Lott author of "Jewel" "Mirror Lake" is a taut psychological drama that carried me through from first page to last. Mr. Greene's is a bright new voice in American literature, a voice that can render exquisitely the sharpest truths of the human heart and the finest details of a passing landscape all at once. May many more books follow "Mirror Lake!" James Lee Burke Thomas Greene's first novel, "Mirror Lake, " is a beautiful piece of writing. The descriptions of New England are haunting, the characters complex -- in some way reflections of all of us. His prose is clean, poetic, and infused with the themes of family, death, loyalty, and romantic love. He writes with Emerson's love of the countryside and James M. Cain's ability to see tragedy at work in the lives of ordinary people. I think we're going to hear a lot more about this very fine novelist. John Hough, Jr. author of "The Last Summer" "Mirror Lake" is a strong and gentle book about friendship, loneliness, and the transcendent stubbornness of the human heart. A sweet, sad story, full of surprises and resonant of the green mountains and clear waters of Vermont. Nelson DeMille "Mirror Lake" is an eloquently written tale of two love stories brought together by an unlikely friendship. A stunning accomplishment, "Mirror Lake" reaffirms the true power of love and its resounding ability to transform the human heart. These characters will stay with you a long time. Thomas Greene is a major new voice in American fiction. Susan Cheever This book gets Vermont just right, with its punishing winters and ravishing summers. Greene's characters, trapped in this powerful landscape, live out a story of love, betrayal, and violence that kept me turning the pages to the end. Thomas Christopher Greene was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Hobart College and the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. He currently lives and works in Vermont. This is his first novel. Chapter 1 My name is Nathan Carter. Let me say that even though this story does not concern me -- not directly, anyway -- I feel an obligation to tell it, because it was told to me, and it is the type of story that needs to be told to others, especially now that all the principals are dead. Sometimes in life, as we all know, our experiences collide with another person's in a manner that can only be considered fate: something larger than happenstance, an intermingling of otherwise disparate lives, for a greater purpose. Such was the case, I believe, with my connection to Wallace Fiske, a man whose world should never, under normal circumstances, have come into touch with my own; a man from a different era, from an era that no longer exists in America, except in the small corners and margins of rural life. It was the summer of 1996, and I had had several seemingly unrelated cathartic experiences in a row, the most notable of which, the death of my father by an untimely heart attack, sent me reeling and scrambling out of Boston, where I had lived for the ten years since I left college; sent me north to the green mountains and valleys of northern Vermont. In Boston, I had been an itinerant student and waiter, someone who, in the language of my class, never seemed to get his act together. I was also a serial monogamist, staying in a relationship with a woman for six months to a year, and then abruptly leaving her; meeting another woman and falling madly, crazily in love, only to beg off as soon as the honeymoon ended. You could say I had a problem with commitment, and perhaps even intimacy, the kind of intimacy that comes from a love that grows and changes with time; but the truth for me was more complex than any armchair psychology could pin down so neatly. I was at the time, and in truth still am today,