Three Rivers

Melody Mahaffey, trapped into touring for years with a third-rate Christian pop band she can hardly stand, is almost relieved to receive her mother's distress call. But when she returns home to care for her dying father and brain-damaged brother at the sprawling, defunct Three Rivers Farm, Melody is shocked to discover that her mother has abandoned the family. Sure that her daughter will do the right thing, Geneva has left to seek spiritual guidance and break things off with her long-time lover. Rain begins to fall and an epic flood threatens the Mississippi Delta. While Melody tries to get a handle on the chaos at home, a man and his little boy are squatting on her land, escaping their own nightmare. Obi is on the run from a horrific mistake, and he's intent on keeping his son with him at any cost. When the storm arrives, though, they have no choice but to take shelter in Melody's house. And the waters just keep rising. A lifetime of lies, misunderstandings and dark secrets bubble to the surface as the flood destroys the land and threatens their lives. Set against the fertile but dangerous landscape of the rural south near the fictional town of White Forest, Mississippi, Three Rivers beautifully weaves together three parallel stories, told over three days, as each character is propelled headlong into the storm.

Sixteen-Year-Old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy. It’s a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it’s a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May, 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing 20 million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below. The town where Peter lives with his father. The town where Celestia has just arrived to join him. This searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance—and a tragic event in U. S. history.

Sometimes people leave their home with the hopes of finding something better. Sometimes they are forced out and chased away. Philip Eamer and his wife, Catrina, experience both in this true story of immigrants searching for a place to call home. The Eamer family’s story begins in 1755 as they leave the Rhine Valley for a better life in America. Once there, they move to the Mohawk River Valley in New York, where they build a home and raise 10 children. Despite the effects of the French Indian War, the Eamers flourish and happily find their lives intertwined with their neighbours and fellow immigrants for almost two decades. However, no family’s story occurs in isolation, and eventually the Eamers find themselves at the mercy of the political and historic events of the American Revolution. Choosing to side with the Crown, they are forced to flee their home at the hands of neighbours and soldiers. What follows next is representative of many Loyalists’ experiences. The Eamer family is forced to make a 370-km (230-mile) trek to Montreal, where they must live in a refugee camp for three years before finally being granted their own land in the St. Lawrence Valley for their loyalty to the King. Told by one of Philip and Catrina’s descendants, Three River Valleys Called Home is historical fiction based on a real family and true events. Although some of the interactions and dialogue may be imagined, they are firmly planted in the harsh realities that many immigrants faced and pay tribute to the true grit of the settlers who built North America. While this book will have special meaning for the thousands of descendants of the Eamer family (and the other families who made up their community), their story will touch anyone with a history of immigration in their family tree.

Sixteen-Year-Old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy. It’s a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it’s a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May, 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing 20 million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below. The town where Peter lives with his father. The town where Celestia has just arrived to join him. This searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance—and a tragic event in U. S. history.

Meg Doyle did not intend to return home from college with a suitcase and nowhere else to go. Ideally, she would have rolled up to her tiny home town in a limousine and jumped out wearing a designer tuxedo. She would have shaken a few hands, signed a few autographs, and maybe kissed a few girls before riding off into the sunset of her glorious, post-grad future in set design. Instead, she's stuck spending the summer in her childhood bedroom, trawling the internet for job listings after a last minute internship cancellation in Europe. It's anything but triumphant. Her friends in the city won't stop reminding her what she's missing, her mom won't stop researching lesbian slang terms to seem more 'relatable, ' and around every corner in the small town of Chapel Creek, there's Connie Shipley. The girl Meg used to know better than anyone in the world. The girl she spent countless nights huddled under the blankets with for sleepovers and movie marathons. The girl who leaned in and kissed her four summers before. The girl who hasn't spoken to her since. ...Which makes it very inconvenient that Meg's heart still stops every single time she sees her. This Used to Be Easier is a New Adult, small town F/F romance from Katia Rose. It features a quirky cast of unforgettable characters, an endless supply of cheesy fishing puns, and the kind of love that lasts a lifetime, despite a few bumps along the way.

Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin.