Clement and Angel are fraternal twins separated at birth; they grow up in the same small, frontier logging town of Stillwater, Minnesota. Clement was left at the orphanage. Angel was adopted by the town’s richest couple, but is marked and threatened by her mother’s mental illness. They rarely meet, but Clement knows if he is truly in need, Angel will come to save him. Stillwater, near the Mississippi River and Canada, becomes an important stop on the Underground Railroad. As Clement and Angel grow up and the country marches to war, their lives are changed by many battles for freedom and by losses in the struggle for independence, large and small. Stillwater  reveals the hardscrabble lives of pioneers, nuns, squaws, fur trappers, loggers, runaway slaves and freedmen, outlaws and people of conscience, all seeking a better, freer, more prosperous future. It is a novel about mothers, about siblings, about the ways in which we must take care of one another and let go of one another. And it’s brought to us in Nicole Helget’s winning, gorgeous prose. With historic forces playing out on a human scale, this novel brings a lyrical voice all its own to midwestern literature. An author recognized for her memoir The Summer of Ordinary Ways (2005), Helget plunges with the force of river rapids into nineteenth-century life on the changing landscape of Minnesota’s wild frontier, with all its hardships. The story revolves around the connection between fraternal twins Clement and Angel, which proves to be both a blessing and a burden throughout their lives among the hardy town and prairie folk. Helget’s writing practically sings with the force of Clement’s aching devotion to his sister and its consequences. The characters’ unique perspectives weave a rich tapestry of the community, replete with religious caretakers, logger barons, and an abolitionist brothel. Throughout, Helget beats the theme of human bondage in ways both obvious and subtle, from runaway slaves to a domineering mother. A well-crafted meditation on bonds and bondage, Stillwater offers an eloquent tribute to the tribulations of those who made their mark on a growing nation. --Bridget Thoreson