It’s a scene out of an American dream: a stretch of city beach buzzes with young families playing and laughing under the hot afternoon summer sun, moms chasing after children, splashing in the shallow ripples of Lake Pend Oreille. We are on the outskirts of Sandpoint, Idaho, a quiet, charming lakeside town in the mountain west. From the idyllic scenery and bustling beach, you wouldn’t know this is a place recently overwhelmed with anxiety, grief and fear born of state politics.
Lauren Sanders relaxes among the beachgoers in a sea-green bikini that reveals her pregnant belly, keeping an eye under her sun hat on her young daughter, Gwen, who’s angling to get back in the water.
