Before the Creek Rises

For nineteen years Diane balanced the Aberly school district’s budget. Now, newly appointed to borough council, she is the deciding vote on the biggest land-use fight in a generation: a stormwater plan for a million-square-foot warehouse that would send more water toward the creek flats, where the poorest families in town have flooded four times since 1972.

The farmer selling his land to the developer is Wes Kemmerer, a widower who loves his dairy farm more than anyone in the room and is the one paving it. On a site walk he shows Diane the one thing that could sink his own sale: where the water really goes. Before long she is milking with him at four in the morning, pulling a calf at midnight, and falling for the man whose future depends on her vote.

Half the town will say she’s been bought. The other half will say she’s been fooled. And one July night, the creek is going to have the last word.

A big-hearted novel about land, duty, second chances, and the nerve to fall in love in public. Book Four of The Penrose Street Stories. It stands alone.