by Amy Greene
First published 2015
Annie Clyde Dodson stands on her ancestral mountaintop farm in East Tennessee, watching the Tennessee Valley Authority prepare to flood her town of Yuneetah. The river called Long Man will rise in one day, bringing electricity and jobs but drowning generations of history beneath its waters. Her husband wants to leave for Michigan and the promise of steady work. Annie Clyde refuses to abandon the land her family has farmed since before memory. As a fierce storm mirrors the conflict tearing at their marriage, their three-year-old daughter Gracie vanishes into the night. The clock counts down toward the flood as Annie Clyde searches desperately through the rain. Did Gracie wander off alone, or did Amos take her? The mysterious drifter has returned to Yuneetah with unclear motives, perhaps planning violence to stop the dam. With hours left before the water rises, Annie Clyde must choose between the land that defines her and the daughter who completes her. Greene draws from the real history of TVA dam construction to create a story about what we sacrifice for progress and what we cannot bear to lose.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: choice, displacement, loss
Setting: East Tennessee, Yuneetah, Tennessee, Michigan
Period: 20th-century
288 pages · Paperback · Vintage Contemporaries