Christine arrives at her family’s farmhouse near Florence, needing respite from personal sorrow and the quiet to work, only to find the cistern dry. Without water, she will be unable to stay, so, determined, she begins an immediate search for a solution. She knows the hills are veined with rubber tubes carrying precious trickles from springs higher up. Illegal taps and diversions are common, but as she tries to restore the flow to her house, she finds herself drawn ever deeper into the patchwork community of locals and foreigners, who know more than they admit. A potential solution opens up yet another puzzle as human dramas emerge from the seemingly tranquil landscape. Though water is restored, the mystery is ultimately not solved. Instead, lives are discovered to be as mysteriously connected and entangled as the water system. With a sleuth’s eye for details, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, the novel offers an almost anthropologically precise portrait of a time and place that makes for addictive reading.

Megan Weiler’s The Spring is the haunting account of a young woman’s return, alone, to her family’s house in the Tuscan hills and of the locals and foreigners who jostle around her in uneasy community. Subtle, intense, and elegant, Weiler’s novel evokes rich experiences and essential themes.

-Claire Messud

What an insightful and spellbinding novel Megan Weiler has written. The Tuscan countryside, beautifully rendered in vivid detail, is infused with mysteries that are pursued with patient, inexorable attention. The Spring is richly, deliciously rewarding. -Joanna Scott