These Granite Islands/Sarah Stonich

Description: In the small town of Cypress, Minnesota, Isobel, a former milliner, now an older woman on her deathbed, recalls the summer of 1936 -- a pivotal season that forever changed her life. That summer her husband, Victor, bought a remote island where he took their two young sons to vacation while Isobel slaved at home in her hat shop with her daughter, Louisa. When a striking, enigmatic woman named Cathryn enters the shop, she and Isobel forge a fast friendship, sharing intimacies and deep secrets. As Isobel says, "A person need only walk over your threshold and your life can become forever changed, lived under a different sky." Stonich weaves her story seamlessly between the present -- the elderly Isobel's hospital bed in the wake of a stroke -- and the past, where she acted as a lookout for Cathryn and her lover, Jack, a handsome forest ranger. But Cathryn and Jack not only hide but disappear that summer, culminating in a fiery mystery. Reflecting on that summer and beyond, Isobel examines her own tragic losses -- losses even more devastating than that of her friendship with Cathryn, forcing Isobel to view her life, her marriage, and her own choices in a new light.

Comments: I found this title while browsing at the library. After a solid start the story becomes a little slow in the middle and I found myself not liking the main character so much at that point in her life. It resumes a good pace later and I found myself racing to the end to solve the mystery of the lovers' disappearance.