Flood Stage -- A Novel

The floodwaters keep rising, the torrential rains continue, and suddenly your life and home are thrust onto flood stage. How do you react to the peril? Do you stay or flee? What do you choose to carry away, and what do you hope to leave behind?

Ferocious rains pummel Thalburg Canyon and overfill the Baptista River that runs through a tight-knit rural community in Northern California.

When flooding ensues, canyon residents are forced to make life-altering decisions, and their interconnected stories are acted out on center stage. A paralyzed woman, exhausted by her life, plans an opportune death in the flood. The local real estate agent is shocked to discover beauty in the canyon's demise. Couples drift together or apart over old affairs and insurance coverage mistakes. A man burdened by a toxic secret struggles for atonement as the flood encroaches upon his final opportunity for redemption.

These and other stories portray a series of unique personal histories caught up in a universal human drama.

Acclaim for the author's memoir Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic

"This haunting memoir is an important addition to the canon of AIDS literature. Scannell writes beautifully and with an insight that escapes most physicians."
—Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone

"Kate Scannell is the rare doctor who has been transformed by her patients. In this irresistible, informative, and enormously moving book, she tells us not only her own story, but theirs."
—Gloria Steinem

"A remarkable book, part history, part memoir, that reads with the grace and eloquence of good fiction."
—Bay Area Reporter

"... an enormously moving, thoughtful and compassionate memoir."
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Acclaim for the author's psychological thriller Immortal Wounds: A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery

"Immortal Wounds is a compelling, richly textured mystery that draws us deeply into the cloistered world of the hospital. A murderer or two may be on the loose in Scannell's thriller, but the psychological struggles and ethical mysteries encountered daily by her doctors and nurses prove just as riveting. A must-read!"
—Jodi Halpern, MD, author of From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice