The Thin Place

In a thin place, according to legend, the membrane separating this world from the spirit world is almost nonexistent. The small new England town of Varennes is such a place, and Kathryn Davis transports us there - beginning with one bright spring morning when three girls come across the body of a man at the local lake. While two of them run to get help, the third stays with the body and brings it back to life. This is sturdy, blunt Mees Kipp, whose helpless ministry responds not to virtue or justice, only to need.
The Thin Place is the story of Mees and her friends, and the worldly and otherworldly forces that come into play in their town over the course of a summer. Like a drop of water that is seen under the microscope to be teeming with life - with old ladies and bankers, teachers and lovers, as well as with many animals, wild and domestic, that are among its most extraordinary creatures - The Thin Place illuminates every aspect of creation. It draws on commonplace forms - police blotters, garden almanacs, Sunday sermons, horoscopes, and diaries - to ground its surprising pageant.
When Varennes's tranquility is shattered by the arrival of a threatening outsider, Mees's gift is further tested by the conflict between wish and logic, between the earthly and the miraculous. Kathryn Davis addresses the precariousness of life in the twenty-first century partly by way of spiritual questions - the dream of resurrection among them.