They reserved three adjacent rooms at the Trout Creek Hotel, ground floor with parking spaces in front, but Pete popped the top: He and Celine would sleep in Bennie. Hank couldn’t get over it. They wouldn’t think of sleeping in the stuffy room. Hank watched his little mother step down out of the camper to survey a night full of stars before sleep. She had taught him almost everything he knew about moving through the world with some semblance of grace, and he tried to live it and bumbled often and tried again. She had taught him courage in the landscapes of the imagination, and to find the joy in things when he was afraid. But she brought him pain, too. She wouldn’t share with him the one story he cared about more than any other.
He had a sister somewhere. Whose heart pumped with his mother’s blood, and some of his own. He imagined that his sister would have an affinity for the vulnerable and the lost that surprised the people around her. She probably had a quizzical humor, and a delight in things that were mysterious and didn’t quite fit. He wanted to know her. He wanted to make her a package at Christmas, to call her out of the blue and say, “Hey, it’s your bro, what’s up?” But his mother had stonewalled. Years and years. He had felt the intensity of her pain and had tried to respect her wishes, and backed off. But here they were, under a river of stars in Montana, and Celine had just given Gabriela her father. Gabriela was about to embark on a new life and Hank could sense the excitement, and the strength she would find there.
Celine caught sight of him and turned. “Hank! Come look at Orion with me. We don’t see the stars much in the city. I’ll miss this terribly. Honestly, I could live in Bennie for the rest of my life.”
“Whoa! I said you could borrow him.”
“I wonder if the shell would get too tight?”
“Probably.”
“Probably.”
Hank hugged his mother good night. He squeezed her and whispered in her ear, “Mom, I know I have a sister. I don’t blame you, or anyone.”
She stiffened, breathed. She stepped back from the hug and held him at arm’s length. She said, “Bobby told you.”
He nodded.
“How they took her away before I could even smell her hair, put my lips in her ear, tell her what I wanted to tell her. The promises I had to make. I had things to say to her.” She pursed her lips, breathed.
Hank found his voice. “Her name was Isabel, right?”
“She told you that?”
He nodded.
“That’s right. Isabel. What I called her. She would be—is—ten years older than you. I wanted to promise her that I would find her. One day, I would. I did promise. As the nurse swept her out the door. It’s something I live with.”
Hank hesitated. He closed his eyes and he could smell the cold water in the creek. “Will you keep looking?”
“I am looking every day. I never stop.”
Acknowledgments
Many dear friends and family contributed generously to the making of this book. To my first reader, Kim Yan, I am so grateful. Your insight, humor, and literary sensitivity are a great boon. Lisa Jones and Helen Thorpe were constant companions and indispensable, as always. Thank you. And thanks to Donna Gershten for your energy and careful readings. And to Mark Lough. Ted Steinway, Nathan Fischer, Jay Heinrichs, Rebecca Rowe, and John Heller helped all along as they are wont to do. As did Pete Beveridge, Leslie Heller-Manuel, Callie French, and David Grinspoon. Carlton Cuse gave me another creative jolt, which he’s been doing since we were fifteen. Jay Mead and Edie Farwell shared their excitement and knowledge. So did Sally and Robert Hardy, Margaret Keith/Sagal, and JP Manuel-Heller. Ana Goncalves saved me at a critical moment. Thanks again to Jason Hicks and Jason Elliott for their expertise. And to Bethany Gassman, Laura Sainz, Lamar Sims, William Pero, and Thor Arnold, who know the territory. And to the docs, Melissa Brannon and Mitchell Gershten. Thanks to my buddies and first cousins Ted McElhinny and Nick Goodman. I’m glad we were there together.
I am grateful to Myriam Anderson and Céline Leroy for their discernment and passion. Your love of the work means the world to me.
To David Halpern, my agent, I raise another glass. This book, like all the others, would not have happened without your keen input, enthusiasm, edits, tact, encouragement, and humor. Skol.
And to my editor, Jenny Jackson, well. There are, for once, few words. Time and again I have depended on your intelligence and your grace and I am grateful beyond telling.
Thank you all. What a pleasure and a privilege.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Heller is the best-selling author of The Painter and The Dog Stars. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and a longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Celine, a suspenseful and heartrending story of one woman’s quest to heal broken families—including her own—through her work as a private investigator.
1. What tone does the opening scene of the book set for the rest of the story, in both establishing the atmosphere and its main themes and characters?
2. How did the interweaving of Celine’s backstory with that of Paul’s and his family’s create tension and momentum as you read?
3. Discuss the different, and even opposite, sides of Celine’s and Pete’s personalities—their hard-edged, more masculine sides and their softer, artistic, and sensitive sides. How do their careers allow both of those sides to prosper, and what does their unique relationship suggest about what they love about each other?
4. How does the couple balance out each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make for an effective partnership at home and in work? Does either of them seem more dominant in either space?
5. How does Celine’s complicated experience with motherhood motivate her work as a private investigator? Did you feel that that blurring of professional and personal lines enhanced or hindered her relationship with her clients—especially with Gabriela?
6. Celine imagines that for Gabriela home is a “space within the relative safety of her own skin.” Celine may share this sensibility to some degree. Which of her actions, tendencies, and memories in the book are most reflective of this very private and self-protective mindset?
7. How does an urban versus a rural setting bring out different sides of different characters, especially Celine’s? Can you track a progression of what kinds of places they settle in depending on their moods and mindsets, or is their mood more affected by where they are at any given time?
8. What service does Celine offer her clients on a more psychological level, beyond her unearthing of the facts of certain mysteries in their lives? Do you think she absorbs their secrets and suffering, and, if so, how does that motivate her to continue to the next case, even at the age of sixty-eight?