The Secret History of Lake Amikota

Hindsight is supposed to be twenty-twenty. I look back and try to understand. I m not sure why it s so difficult for me to find clarity in the past. Or in the present, for that matter. But in the telling of the story, I hope I ll find some truth, some answers. Or perhaps I ll gain the self-awareness that facing the secrets of the past can bring. I sit here looking out the bookstore window at the street, and beyond that, the lake. It s windy and cold today. The whitecaps rising up from the lake against the backdrop of a gray sky warn of winter s imminence. But my story begins a long time ago, and it doesn t begin in winter. Down the road it was, in the old brown house. In summer.