Mailboat

Wen Apollo has bigger dreams than the riverside town of Coopersville, where she has always lived. Her job running the local mailboat, however, keeps her tied to the water and the place. Islands are scattered across the river, and their residents depend on her runs for groceries, medicine, pet supplies, and plumbing parts.

One raw spring day, Wen delivers a package to Owl Island, the summer home of the well-known Gage family. The parcel is addressed to Estelle, the eldest Gage daughter, whom Wen has long admired from a distance. Estelle has retreated to the islands to find solitude. With the deadline for her next novel closing in, she is focused entirely on her writing, until the handsome mailboat captain appears on her doorstep and pulls her thoughts elsewhere.

More packages keep carrying Wen back to Owl Island, and back to Estelle. As summer approaches, though, the Gages are set to return, and the quiet weeks the two women have spent together on the island are about to end. The story asks what that will mean for the new relationship between them.