Still Water

A child is found in the river.

Sheriff Jack Holloway has served Lexingfield, Virginia for fourteen years. He knows this town, its people, its grief. He has always believed that knowing a place this thoroughly means something.

He is wrong.

As the investigation deepens and the losses mount, Jack finds himself drawn to Grace James — the town librarian, the woman who runs the grief support group, the one person in Lexingfield who seems to understand what he is carrying. The farmhouse at the edge of town becomes the only place he can breathe.

Grace James has given her life to this community. She reads its people the way she reads her books — completely, with full attention, missing nothing. She knows what Lexingfield carries. She has always known.

Still Water is a literary crime novel about what small towns hold, what grief does to the people inside it, and the particular danger of being known by someone who understands you better than you understand yourself.

“The river knows everything. One need only listen carefully.” — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha