Expected in 2027 (or so), Stephen Hoffman's third installment in the Three Rivers Trilogy dives into the vicissitudes of memory in a unique way, exploring questions about our inheritance--both genetic and psychological--from previous generations. The setting is once again North Dakota, in locales along the Souris River, which dips from Canada across the U.S. border, traverses a northern tier of agricultural counties, and eventually makes its way back into Manitoba, carrying its waters to Lake Winnipeg and the Hudson Bay beyond. From Minot to Bismarck, ND, is 111 miles, but what lies between the two towns is the Laurentian continental divide. Rains and snow that fall on one side of it move north toward the Arctic Ocean, and those that fall on the other move south to the Gulf of Mexico. Sisters Cecilia and Josephine were raised on a farm that actually straddled the divide in the township of South Prairie. Was it inevitable that though they live in towns less than two hours apart, their small differences in childhood would lead to a divergence which felt like a continent separating them? What role might their shared cousin-once-removed play in drawing them back together? Look for the return of a few familiar personae, too, as life brings new challenges to some of the people of the prairie you have come to know through the Trilogy.

Native flora, Theodore Roosevelt National Park