A Sudden Light, by Garth Stein

"Everything is everything is everything" is how Trevor now views the world; years after his perception of his family and the line between the living and dead was brought into focus and blurred simultaneously. People, places, plants, and time are all connected. Trevor begins to put the pieces of his intricate and ill-fated family history together when he visits Riddell house with his father, Jones, in the summer of 1990. The massive estate, situated by Seattle's Puget Sound, is all that remains of the Riddell timber fortune. Jones hasn't been back since he was 16 and returns with his son in tow, intending to only stay long enough for his father, Samuel, to give him the power of attorney in order to develop the estate. This is a last ditch effort by Jones to save his marriage that is on the brink after his boat-building business went under.

Thus, Trevor is thrust into the odd world of Riddell house, unprepared for what he will find. From the beginning he finds himself intrigued and (uncomfortably) attracted to his Aunt Serena, who has stayed in the crumbling mansion to care for Samuel, diagnose by Serena (not a doctor) to have dementia. Trevor unearths old newspapers, letters, and diaries found in the local library and stuffed between the pages of books and the bottom of ancient trunks that reveal the series of events that led to the sinking of the Riddells. However, the clouds of his family's legacy part when the spirit of his deceased Great-Great Grandfather, Benjamin, visits him.

Ultimately, the fate of the family and the sanctity of the land is put in Trevor's hands. Elements are so organically intertwined by Stein that the mechanical tone at various moments in the book is odd. The gradual unveiling of the extent of Serena's insanity is exquisitely unsettling and the notion that all will return to the earth is played out to the end, as the flames rise and the ash settles.