“It’s so character driven, and you really feel as though it’s not a made-up story, that these are real people, and that you are getting a glimpse into their lives.”

—Nancy Pearl

The Center of Everything slips deftly through time, all the while taking the reader to the marvelous unfolding of secrets (both wondrous and murderous) that were right before our eyes. How beauifully our attention is distracted and illuminated in this resonant novel.”

—Joan Silber, author of Secrets of Happiness

“This doesn’ feel like a work of fiction. It feels real, like reading someone’s diary. I’m left convinced that these characters have immortal souls, and I find comfort in their familiarity. I want to spend more time in their world, urging them to whisper their secrets in my ear. A brilliant book—I wish I could write like this.”

—Jamie Ford, New York Times–bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

ALSO BY JAMIE HARRISON

The Widow Nash

Blue Deer Thaw

An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence

Going Local

The Edge of the Crazies

Title Page

Dedication

For Will and John

This beautiful sound. Like you’ve thrown a plum and an orchard comes back at you.

RICHARD FLANAGAN, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

. . . the thing I came for:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck

the thing itself and not the myth

ADRIENNE RICH, “Diving into the Wreck”

Part One

Part
One

1. Sunday, June 30, 2002

1

Sunday, June 30, 2002

When Polly was a child, and thought like a child, the world was a fluid place. People came and went and never looked the same from month to month or year to year. They shifted bodies and voices—a family friend shaved a beard, a great-aunt shriveled into illness, a doctor grew taller—and it would take time to find them, to recognize them.