Split Estate (2008)

In her dreamy '04 novel There Is Room for You, Charlotte Bacon sent a troubled protagonist from New York to India in search of peace and family truths. This time, in Split Estate, it's a man and his two teenage children, cracked down the middle by their mother's suicide, who leave Manhattan for rural Wyoming. Raw-hearted lawyer Arthur, handsome son Cam, and gawky daughter Celia aim for respite — and an escape from punishing memories — on Arthur's scrubby, desolate family ranch. Bacon's prose is occasionally too laborious and lacks a crucial levity, but her descriptions of bottled grief and wide-open skies resonate. B