YORK FERRY by Annie Dawid (Cane Hill...

YORK FERRY by Annie Dawid (Cane Hill Press: $10.95; 180 pp., paperback original). Annie Dawid’s first novel chronicles two decades of an ongoing family crisis in a small Upstate New York town. Kay Pinny has independence thrust upon her when her husband leaves to search for the remnants of a wartime romance. She struggles to raise her children under the shadow of a father who is gone but might reappear at any moment. Submerging herself in her family, Kay grows strong, but she becomes--perhaps inevitably--a collage of others’ expectations: mother, gardener, wage-earner, etc. Dawid’s understated evocation of life in a moribund hamlet suggests that the image of love can seem as important as the reality.