Lee Zacharias is the author of four previous books, including The Only Sounds We Make and Lessons, a Book of the Month Club selection. Professor emerita of English at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, her work has appeared in the Best American Essays series. Across the Great Lake is a haunting novel of nautical adventure, love, ghosts, and tragedy on the Great Lakes. In her eighty-fifth year, Fern Halvorson recalls her childhood journey on a great coal-fired ferry in the icy winter of 1936—and the secret she has kept since that ill-fated voyage.