Description
Book SynopsisNothing could hold back the Mississippi that summer. Jackson Island, which jutted up out of the river as an overgrown sand bar, was completely submerged. The island, immortalized by Mark Twain, wasn''t very big to begin with, though Huckleberry Finn and Jim found it to be plenty. Water was what people talked about, worried over, and watched. Upstream and downstream, levees busted by force and sabotage. The river''s to blame. When you grow up on the banks in Hannibal, Missouri, you need an escape route. You never know when the water is going to rise and you have to run.
Laura Brooks has come home to Hannibal: a place that ten years ago she couldn''t wait to leave. Growing up she felt stifled in this town ruled by its past, its hokey devotion to everything Twain, the small-mindedness of its inhabitants, and the rich/poor divide that runs as deep as the Mississippi River. What really drove her away, though, was the complicated demise of her love affair with Sammy, that fa
