American literature's prototypical novel of a woman's mid-life attempt to recreate herself is Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Edna is the foremother of Annie and characters like her, discovering a deep discontentment with her marriage and her life and beginning to gain new awareness as she seeks to find herself. In her artistic pursuits and her love affairs, Edna casts about for a new center but ultimately cannot find a way to fit into her society.

While On Mystic Lake borrows from a Chopin-influenced literary tradition, Hannah's story is also strongly shaped by the romantic tradition—one that elevates and seeks solace in the natural world—as well as the romance genre, in which happy endings are paramount. Hannah's novel of awakening is one in which the heroine trades one love affair for another, and, unlike Edna, finds fulfillment in family life, develops clearly defined...