WINNER, Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award

WINNER, WILLA in Original Softcover Fiction

HONOREE, indieB.R.A.G. Medallion in Fiction

"A fresh female voice and a bold take on environmental awareness. Great read!" - Women Writing the West

Nomadic whitewater guide Madeline Kruse finds herself drawn to the wild rivers of Utah and the tiny town of Junction. After a life on the run from her painful past, there's something-and someone-in Junction that draws her in and away from everything she's known. But when outside forces threaten the land and waters she's fallen for as well as the people she's left back home, she must choose: return to her roots to recover what's left of her family or make a stand in the new place she's come to love.

This debut novel about everything at stake in a forgotten corner of the West "keeps so many dazzling balls in the air: war, love, activism, wilderness-and always, always, the most dazzling ball of all-Lawton's dazzling descriptions of nature." - Jill Koenigsdorg, author of Phoebe and the Ghost of Chagall