High Water - Softcover

Hightower, Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034079240X ISBN 13: 9780340792407

Publisher: New York: Henry Holt & Co. 2002, 2002

Synopsis

A suspenseful and chilling tale of a family undone by a mother's mysterious death and a father's startling secrets.

Beaufort, South Carolina, is home to the Smallwoods, a family that appears close-knit but is in fact deeply at odds. The youngest sibling, Georgie, is consumed with anger at her father, Fielding, an unforgiving ex-marine, whose involvement in a notorious scandal many years earlier cast a shadow over his career and the Smallwood name. A fierce patriarch, Fielding neglects Georgie's mother; belittles her brother, Ashby; and denies her sister, Claire, the financial support she needs after a trying divorce. When her mother dies suddenly and of mysterious causes, Georgie immediately suspects that her father was somehow involved.

As she works to convince Ashby and Claire of her suspicions, however, their father is murdered, and Claire is implicated in his death. Georgie desperately attempts to piece together both her family and her personal life, but the evidence of their father's betrayal and the secrets of his past threaten to leave the Smallwood family in ruin.

As affecting as it is suspenseful, High Water infuses a harrowing mystery with an intensely personal study of the delicate, complex bonds that define a family. Lynn Hightower's most successful book yet, High Water, packs a powerful combination of intrigue and insight.

About this title

About the Author

Lynn Hightower is the author of six previous novels, including Satan's Lambs, which won the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. She studied creative writing with Wendell Berry at the University of Kentucky and holds a degree in journalism. She lives in Tennessee.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I was angry with my mother the night that she died. Angry because I had been made to feel guilty, frustrated, and helpless. Guilty because her life seemed to me a form of undeserved hell; frustrated and helpless because she would not change it according to my dictates.

The drive to the hospital is etched in my memory -- the flat, tarry pavement, a straight stretch down highway 17, the newly settled dark riding softly on the treetops and sandy soil. I think of that drive as the last normal moment, before the slow, heart-nailing realization that the things I took for granted, the things everyone takes for granted, did not hold true. But I did not look, then, to find treachery among my own. You don't look for bloodstains, or double bolt the doors, when you know it's only family coming.

About this edition

• Publisher: New York: Henry Holt & Co. 2002
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 034079240X
• ISBN 13: 9780340792407
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336