At the age of eighty, Brendan Auberon - once a member of the Order of Our Lady of the Valley - is now a member of the Order of the Old and Crippled and Confined. Before his time runs out, Brendan has one wish: to see his two hundred acres of wooded ridge overlooking what used to be Paradise Valley...before the politicians from Boston, half a century ago, did the unthinkable. They evicted the people from their homes, their towns, their lives and drowned the villages to provide water to the big city. Now, Brendan's memories of his parents and his beloved Abbey can only be found beneath the surface of the Stillwater Reservoir.

The Forms of Water is the story of what happens when Brendan - after revealing that he's leaving half the land to his niece Wiloma and half to his nephew Henry - convinces Henry to hijack the nursing home van to make this ancestral visit. What begins as a lark becomes an adventure infinitely more complex for, as the author makes clear with brilliant metaphoric flair, the patterns of family endlessly rearrange themselves, yet remain as closely tied as snow is to rain.

For Henry - whose deluded dreams of real-estate development cost him both home and family - the promise of land rolls on his tongue like a truffle. For Wiloma - who, to the chagrin of her children and estranged husband, has become a devotee of The Church of the New Reason - the land is a distraction from her mission to bring Brendan to a place where he might die with his spirit intact. But for Henry and Wiloma's children, Brendan is neither the key to riches nor a soul in need of saving. He's Grunkie, named after a childhood mispronunciation, a force of stability amidst a morass of parental confusion. They want their parents to stop chasing after a past which can never be recovered, and to see what is happening right in front of their eyes.

It takes a single misstep one lovely morning for the Auberons to realize that if, long ago, they lost paradise through others' misdeeds, they can regain it only through the integrity of their own behavior. In a world where Wiloma's daughter cries in exasperation, "This family. When am I going to be free?" - where Brendan says wisely, "We're all lonely. It's what we do with it that counts" - we learn that the treasure we seek might lie close at hand.