Compass Rose — John Casey

Rose is spunky with an inborn talent for theatrics, but being slightly overweight and unpopular at the fancy new school where she's a scholarship student is bad enough. It doesn't help that her single mother is at war with her; her fisherman father lives practically next door with his own wife and kids; and the whole of their insular, gossipy community knows she's an illegitimate child. On the other hand, maybe it isn't so bad being related to half the town and unofficially adopted by everyone.
John Casey's magnificent new novel follows Rose and the complex constellation of family, friends, and foes that circle around her as the years go by, working their slow but irreversible changes on one another and on the rugged, magical landscape they inhabit, with its salt marshes, its creeks and rivers, and the ever-present ocean, whose rhythms and moods shape and reshape the lives of the men and women of Rhode Island.