Trying Not to Drown

     Lucy Miller Brown has seen too many tragedies in her thirty-three years. Still struggling to survive her veteran husband's death, she works tirelessly to create a good life for her three children and aging grandmother on the farm that has supported their family for multiple generations.

     When she thinks about her grandmother rolling biscuits in the kitchen, her boys fishing in the creek, and her teenage daughter galloping through the pines on her huge black horse, Lucy allows herself to enjoy a little bit of happiness. With a bumper crop of fruits and vegetables ripening in the fields, Lucy begins to feel a satisfying sense of control. 

     But she can't control the weather.

Hurricane Florence barrels into the North Carolina coast as a Cat 1, leaving behind normal destruction—nothing Lucy can't handle. But then the storm stalls and dumps over thirty inches of rain in less than three days, causing the rivers to rise to unprecedented levels.

     Following a harried middle-of-the-night escape to the loft of their tractor shed, Lucy guards her family as she watches the tannin stained water of the Black River swallow up their home and farm and threaten to overtake their refuge. Even if they survive, how will she pick up the pieces of their lives and create a new future for her family?