The Reach & Notes Summary

In "The Reach", Stella Flanders is the oldest resident of Goat Island at the age of ninety-five, and she has never been to the mainland. She tells her great-grandchildren that the reach had been wider in her youth. When the children asks what she means, she does not clarify. There is a reach between Goat Island and Raccoon Head Island. Stella has a recurring question float about in her head, "Do you love?" As her birthday passes, Stella begins to hear voices in the winter wind. Her husband, Bill, appears to Stella, asking her to come across to the mainland. The Reach between has frozen over for the first time in over fifty years. Stella decides to walk the Reach just once as she has been spitting up blood for over five years and knows that it is cancer...