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. Georgie is angry enough that her difficult father was involved in a scandal that has hurt the entire family, but now she suspects that he is implicated in her mother's death. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. In this novel of psychological suspense, furniture restorer and antiques dealer Georgie Smallwood believes that her overbearing father, Fielding, was responsible for her mother's mysterious death. But when Fielding is murdered, it is Georgie and her two siblings, Ashby and Claire, who come under suspicion. Then the fragile Claire is arrested for the murder, and Georgie struggles to save her sister by making sense of the family's troubled past, including a scandal involving her father's career in the marines. Hightower fills the story with plot twists that will appeal to thriller fans, but the novel, steeped in the feel of small-town South, also offers an introspective look at a woman's life, her personal relationships, and her sense of family loyalty. Georgie seeks to solve the mystery of her father's murder, but she is equally driven to learn if her father ever really loved her. Sue O'Brien Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "There are plenty of reasons to admire . . . Hightower's Cincinnati police procedurals . . . Along with style and substance, these stories have heart." -- The New York Times Book Review , on The Debt Collector "Lynn Hightower is a major talent." --Jonathan Kellerman "Like her heroine, Hightower is a pro who knows how to get the job done." -- Los Angeles Times "Sharp, shocking, and shamelessly satisfying." --Val McDermid, on No Good Deed "[Hightower's] pacing is brisk, her characters well drawn and credibly flawed and her plotting diabolically intriguing from start to finish." -- Publisher's Weekly 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. 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. Used Book in Good Condition