In a precarious forest shack over California’s Russian River, two women wait out a storm and reflect on the third, missing, member of their family: the husband, the father, the wandering troubled soul. Nicholas is a missionary who traveled from Nevada to California as a 19 year-old intending to do the church’s work, with documentation in his hand and uncertainty in his heart. What he finds in the fields of California is a landscape of fertility and destruction: a lush world beset by natural disaster. Drawing on childhood thoughts and memories to craft this unique work of fiction, author Kathleen Wakefield allows her own experiences in Morro Bay and in a cabin by the Russian River to shape her novella. In poetic, compelling language, Wakefield shows readers what it is to look at the edge of the world and the longest and most beautiful place in the universe.