An Obscure Haven

Haunted by the puzzling death of her parents two years earlier, and after a year of research and introspection, Phyl Alexander, a thirty-two year old assistant manager of a financial firm in Manhattan, packs up and moves to a cottage on Lake Saint Catherine in southern Vermont, leaving Jonathan, her boyfriend of three years behind. Phyl longs for a simpler life, where she has control of her future, planning on becoming a full-time potter, and herb grower. Jonathan, a lawyer, reluctantly helps her relocate to the scenic locale, near the small town of Wellsley. Within the span of seven months, Phyl builds her pottery business and organic herb farm, becoming part of the close-knit community of business owners that her middle-aged neighbor, Emma, keeps organized through her dinner parties. Upon meeting Thad, a forty-two year old veterinarian, Phyl finds that Lake Saint Catherine's is not the safe refuge she had sought, and she reluctantly faces once again the reality of death and her belief in an afterlife. Phyl's immersion in the eastern philosophy of pottery, and the belief that the potter must become one with the vessel, traveling through its various stages - from its beginning as earth, to its shape as a malleable clay body, to its final, permanent form forged in fire - is the thread that connects her life's events.