by Sonja Yoerg
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SONJA YOERG THE MIDDLE OF SOMEWHERE
“Hang on tight for this suspenseful story, beautifully backdropped against the Yosemite Valley wilderness . . . [an] action-paced, heart-tugging novel.”
—Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of Little Mercies
“With the majestic Sierra Nevada wilderness as a fitting backdrop, Sonja Yoerg skillfully explores how the weight of remorse makes the search for personal redemption a test of not just the will, but the heart. The stunningly descriptive prose will have you thinking you’re the one in the raw beauty of the wild, searching for a way out of your regrets.”
—Susan Meissner, author of Secrets of a Charmed Life
“The Middle of Somewhere features Sonja Yoerg’s characteristic clean, intelligent writing and perfectly imperfect characters. Yoerg brings the John Muir Trail alive in this story about a woman’s treacherous journey—physically and emotionally—from the start of the trail to the end.”
—Julie Lawson Timmer, author of Five Days Left
“Sonja Yoerg knows how to write a book that is part finding yourself, part modern romance, and part heart-thumping thriller, all under the majesty of Yosemite National Park.”
—Cathy Lamb, author of What I Remember Most
Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.
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“The Middle of Somewhere is the perfect blend of self-discovery and suspense. Beautiful descriptions of the John Muir Trail are reminiscent of Strayed’s Wild and equally lyrical, but Yoerg ups the ante with both a romance and a thrilling subplot. A complete page-turner!”
—Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of Thought I Knew You
“Beautifully written, [the book] paints a vivid portrait of the wilderness and a woman in peril. Liz is my favorite kind of heroine: smart, courageous, resourceful, and, at times, like many strong women, her own worst enemy. Love story, adventure tale, thriller . . . this novel has it all. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend it.”
—Eileen Goudge, New York Times bestselling author of Bones and Roses
HOUSE BROKEN
“House Broken is a beautifully rendered debut. It’s smart, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking, and it’s spiced with just enough wit to offset the serious core of the story. . . . There are many powerful messages within the pages of this book, and Yoerg skillfully reminds us how important it is to muster the courage to face the past in order to move forward. . . . Several passages took my breath away, and more than once I was moved to tears. This wonderful novel is destined to be a hit with book clubs.”
—Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
“With an unflinching eye, Sonja Yoerg has created a riveting tale exploring the power of family secrets. House Broken is a novel that will burn itself into your memory.”
—Ellen Marie Wiseman, author of What She Left Behind
“House Broken beautifully strips down the layers of family until all that is left is what’s most important—love, forgiveness, understanding, and healing.”
—Jennifer Scott, national bestselling author of Second Chance Friends
“Don’t be fooled by the cute dog on the cover; there is nothing cute about this book. It’s fearless, even dangerous, interested in telling the truth about complexities of behavior (human and animal) and not interested in being reassuring. Yoerg, like a dog in the book, bites down and doesn’t let go. I very much admired her book.”
—Richard Kramer, author of These Things Happen and award-winning TV producer and writer
“A powerful tale of the ways in which families hurt and heal . . . gorgeously written with characters that shine.”
—Eileen Goudge, New York Times bestselling author of Bones and Roses
“Sonja Yoerg’s smartly written debut, House Broken, tells the spot-on tale of the challenges of navigating the three different families so many of us are part of—the one we grow up in, the one we marry into, and the one we create with our partners. With impeccable prose and marvelous wit, Yoerg shows us that for almost every dark pocket of pain a family’s history hides, there is, ultimately, a ray of light and love.”
—Julie Lawson Timmer, author of Five Days Left
“House Broken is a sparkling and insightful debut. Sonja Yoerg paints her characters and her plot with the finest brushstrokes that will have you turning each page faster than the last.”
—Emily Liebert, author of Those Secrets We Keep
“Sonja Yoerg creates a compelling tale of a family gone awry and the ultimate cost of maintaining shameful secrets. House Broken is everything I love in women’s fiction . . . beautiful writing, strong characters, a dash of mystery, and the hope for redemption.”
—Lori Nelson Spielman, international bestselling author of Sweet Forgiveness
ALSO BY SONJA YOERG
House Broken
NAL Accent
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, September 2015
Copyright © Sonja Yoerg, 2015
Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Random House, LLC, 2015
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Yoerg, Sonja, 1959–
The middle of somewhere/Sonja Yoerg.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-17793-2
1. Hikers—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3625.O37M53 2015
813'.6—dc23 2015013191
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To Richard
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe my agent, Maria Carvainis, a huge debt for help with this book. I sure needed it. I also thank Elizabeth Copps for her keen insight.
I’m grateful to my editor, Claire Zion, who saw before I could what Liz’s story was really about. Thank you, Claire, for pointing the way. I’m also grateful to Jennifer Fisher, Caitlin Valenziano, and the rest of the team at Penguin.
Helga Immerfall, Julie Lawson Timmer, and Jerry Smith read earlier versions; I value your advic
e, time, and friendship. My wise and wonderful daughters, Rachel and Rebecca Frank, read numerous versions, putting aside their college texts to give me a hand. I wouldn’t dream of submitting a manuscript without first running your gauntlets.
I also acknowledge a group of writers, most of whom I’ve never laid eyes on, but who are, nevertheless, my friends and dear to me. Eileen Goudge, Samantha Bailey, Richard Kramer, and Melissa Cryzter Fry—thank you for your wisdom and open hearts. The same goes for Ann Garvin and the other fabulous members of the Tall Poppy Writer collective, whose advice and support is my new drug. Oh, and thanks to all of you for the laughs.
Richard Gill walked with me the two hundred twenty miles of the John Muir Trail, and walked them again and again in draft after draft of this story. His photographs of the Sierra inspired my writing daily and kept me true to the Trail. Our shared love of this landscape is inscribed on every page. Thank you for taking that journey with me, and all the others as well, especially this longer one, where in my heart we are forever walking along a mountain trail under a blue sky filled with invisible stars.
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
—JOHN MUIR, FROM JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS,
THE UNPUBLISHED JOURNALS OF JOHN MUIR,
EDITED BY LINNIE MARSH WOLFE.
BOSTON: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO,
1938, P. 439.
CONTENTS
Praise
Also by Sonja Yoerg
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Author’s Note
Conversation Guide
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Liz hopped from foot to foot and hugged herself against the cold. She glanced at the porch of the Yosemite Valley Wilderness Office, where Dante stood with his back to her, chatting with some other hikers. His shoulders shrugged and dropped, and his hands danced this way and that. He was telling a story—a funny one, judging by the faces of his audience—but not a backpacking story because he didn’t have any. His idea of a wilderness adventure was staring out the window during spin class at the gym. Not that it mattered. He could have been describing the self-contradictory worldview of the guy who changes his oil, or the merits of homemade tamales, or even acting out the latest viral cat video. Liz had known him for over two years and still couldn’t decipher how he captured strangers’ attention without apparent effort. Dante was black velvet and other people were lint.
Their backpacks sat nearby on a wooden bench like stiff-backed strangers waiting for a bus. The impulse to grab hers and take off without him shot through her. She quelled it with the reminder that his pack contained essential gear for completing the three-week hike. The John Muir Trail. Her hike. At least that had been the plan.
She propped her left hiking boot on the bench, retied it, folded down the top of her sock and paced a few steps along the sidewalk to see if she’d gotten them even. It wasn’t yet nine a.m., and Yosemite Village already had a tentative, waking buzz. Two teenage girls in pajama pants and oversize sweatshirts walked past, dragging their Uggs on the concrete. Bleary-eyed dads pushed strollers, and Patagonia types with day packs marched purposefully among the buildings: restaurants, a grocery store, a medical clinic, a visitor’s center, gift shops, a fire station, even a four-star hotel. What a shame the trail had to begin in the middle of this circus. Liz couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
She fished Dante’s iPhone out of the zippered compartment on top of his pack and called Valerie. They’d been best friends for eleven years, since freshman year in college, when life had come with happiness the way a phone plan came with minutes.
Valerie answered. “Dante?”
“No. It’s me.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“Asleep in the car. No service most of the way. Even here I’ve only got one bar.”
“Dante’s going to go nuts if he can’t use his phone.”
“You think? How’s Muesli?” Valerie was cat-sitting for her.
“Does he ever look at you like he thinks you’re an idiot?”
“All the time.”
“Then he’s fine.”
“How’s the slipper commute?” Valerie worked as a Web designer, mostly from home, and had twenty sets of pajamas hanging in her closet as if they were business suits.
“Just firing up the machine. You get your permits?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Try to sound more psyched.”
How could she be psyched when this wasn’t the trip she’d planned? She was supposed to hike the John Muir Trail—the JMT—alone. With a few thousand square miles of open territory surrounding her, she hoped to find a way to a truer life. She sure didn’t know the way now. Each turn she’d taken, each decision she’d made—including moving in with Dante six months ago—had seemed right at the time, yet none were right, based as they were on a series of unchallenged assumptions and quiet lies, one weak moral link attached to the next, with the truth at the tail end, whipping away from her again and again.
Maybe, she’d whispered to herself, she could have a relationship with Dante and share a home if she pretended there was no reason she couldn’t. She loved him enough to almost believe it could work. But she’d hardly finished unpacking before her doubts had mushroomed. She became desperate for time away—from the constant stream of friends in Dante’s wake, from the sense of sliding down inside a funnel that led to marriage, from becoming an indeterminate portion of something called “us”—and could not tell Dante why. Not then or since. That was the crux of it. Instead, she told Dante that years ago she’d abandoned a plan to hike the JMT and now wanted to strike it off her list before she turned thirty in November. She had no list, but he accepted her explanation, and her true motivation wriggled free.
The Park Service issued only a few permits for each trailhead. She’d faxed in her application as soon as she decided to go. When she received e-mail confirmation, a crosscurrent of relief and dread flooded her. In two months’ time, she would have her solitude, her bitter medicine.
Then two weeks before her start date, Dante announced he was joining her.
“You’ve never been backpacking, and now you want to go two hundred and twenty miles?”
“I would miss you.” He opened his hands as if that were the simple truth.
There had to be more to it than that. Why else would he suggest embarking on a journey they both knew would make him miserable? She tried to talk him out of it. He didn’t like nature, the cold or energy bars. It made no sense. But he was adamant, and brushed her concerns aside. She’d had no choice but to capitulate.
<
br /> Now she told Valerie, “I am psyched. In fact, I want to hit the trail right now, but Dante’s holding court in the Wilderness Office.”
“I can’t believe you’ll be out of touch for three weeks. What am I going to do without you? Who am I going to talk to?”
“Yourself, I guess. Put an earbud in and walk around holding your phone like a Geiger counter. You could be an incognito schizophrenic.”
“I’ll be reduced to that.” She dropped her voice a notch. “Listen. I have to ask you again. You sure you feel up to this?”
Liz reflexively placed her hand on her lower abdomen. “I’m fine. I swear. It’s just a hike.”
“When I have to park a block from Trader Joe’s, that’s a hike. Two hundred miles is something else. And your miscarriage was less than three weeks ago.”
As if Dante could have overheard, she turned and walked a few more steps down the sidewalk. “I feel great.”
“And you’re going to tell Dante soon and not wait for the absolute perfect moment.”
Despite the cold, Liz’s palms were slick with sweat. Her boyfriend knew nothing of her pregnancy, but her friend didn’t have the whole story either. Valerie had made her daily call to Liz and learned she was home sick, but she’d been vague about the reason. Knowing Dante was out of town, Valerie had stopped by and found Liz lying on the couch, a heating pad on her belly.
“Cramps?”
“No,” Liz had said, staring at the rug. “Worse.”
Valerie had assumed she’d had a miscarriage, not an abortion, and Liz hadn’t corrected her. Next to her deceit of Dante, it seemed minor. Valerie had made her promise she would tell him, but when Liz ran the conversation through her mind, she panicked. If she revealed this bit of information, the whole monstrous truth might tumble out, and she would lose him for certain.
“I will tell him. And I’ll make sure I’ve got room to run when I do.”
“He’ll understand. It’s not like it was your fault.”
