ALDRICH, MO POP. 199: A Novel

Janet Stephens has never forgotten the little town in the foothills of the Ozarks where she lived as a child for just one year. She remembers when her parents divorced and she was shunted off to the dying town and when it was slated to be razed and flooded to make way for a dam. She also remembers how she sometimes felt as if she were sinking and how she held on to her grandmother and her uncle, both of whom were little more than strangers. It was a wrenching year during which she decided her future--where she would live, who she would try to be. And it was a year that decided her character, for despite the virtual disappearance of the town, she is guided for the rest of her life by her memories of the place, the people, the vanished way of life.