UPCOUNTRY

A middle-class ex-Manhattanite, a cash-strapped single mother, and a young member of an obscure religious sect become entangled in a catskills town.

Claire Pedersen and her husband are relocating from NYC to the Catskills where they have found a terrific deal on a property in foreclosure. The owner, April Ives, is a single mother of three children from two different fathers. The house has been in her family for generations but Avril needs the money.

Instantly, Claire and April are antagonistic, but the sale proceeds, and renovations begin.

Claire's husband develops an erotic fascination with Anna, a young member of a religious cult. As a result, two marriages and one pregnancy end dramatically and Claire is left to salvage the life she had imagined.

April, meanwhile, is dealing with her ex who has just been released from prison on a drug charge and the decision of whether she wants to let him build a relationship with the son he has never known.

Life "upcountry" means close encounters between disparate social classes: Claire and April navigate mutual dislike and unanticipated empathy. The house remains a sore point for both. Anna is the unhappy fulcrum between the two older women. Shunned from her community since the incident with Claire's husband, she yearns to return to their protection. Her strict views on transgression and penance are baffling to April; for Claire, Anna remains the embodiment of her ruined marriage.

The death of a local child will set in motion a vortex binding all three women's fates in tragic, and redemptive, ways.

CHIN-SUN LEE is the youngest child of North Korean exiles. After a career in fashion design, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York. She currently lives in New Orleans, working on her second novel. Upcountry is her debut.