Excerpt from Marilou Is Everywhere by Sarah Elaine Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Our well was low from a dry spring, so we bathed in the pond. We called it Heaven Lake because we had grand imaginations and no sense, but it was really just a retainer pond. The family that owned it was called the Dukes and they had built a house, too, which looked like a blank face. They had made the pond, just scratched it right in and pulled the silver into it somehow with backhoes and a spillway of cinder blocks. They peopled it with catfish and bluegill. It was fenced in at the road with an eighteen-foot chain-link gate. The family kept it locked all the time except when they wanted to swim or fish, although they only came up a few times each year and the place was essentially ours.

Excerpted from Marilou Is Everywhere by Sarah Elaine Smith. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Elaine Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.