Something in the Water
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Buried secrets, environmental disaster, and a legacy of corruption hit too close to home when a California native and her family make a fresh start in small-town Texas—and find trouble just beneath the promising surface in this powerful novel for readers of Terry McMillan, Tracy Brown, ReShonda Tate, and Elsie Bryant.
As director of an award-winning investigative news radio show, Billie Jordan is used to helping others fight trouble. But she faces her own when the radio station is sold and she’s unable to find another job. Their savings dwindle as she and her husband struggle to help their son overcome an opioid addiction. When her husband gets a professorship at an HBCU in his hometown, they relocate to get a fresh start. Billie slowly adjusts to a cubicle workspace, sweltering heat, and accepting “y’all” as a word. All is well until severe storms cause massive destruction and contaminate the town’s water supply—making it unsafe to drink.
Billie learns water woes and boil water notices have existed for years. In her new job at a local bank, she finds connections between money, power, and family, are as dirty as the water. Warned to mind her own business, she remains persistent and discovers a shocking cover-up. Even more shocking is who is involved—and the extent to which they’ll go to protect their interests.
Billie has always advocated for the people over the powerful. But when her son gets in trouble, her silence can make it go away. With her son’s freedom at stake and mounting tensions threatening her marriage, she’ll need all her resources and skills to save her family and expose the corruption . . . if a conspiracy doesn’t drown her first.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A reporter unearths a dangerous conspiracy in this rote thriller from Dixon (A Taste for More). Billie Jordan has spent decades working for Oakland radio station KBLK, serving both as news director and the host of a call-in relationship show. When the station is sold and Billie's husband, Cole, is offered a position as a department head at Calder State University in his Texas hometown, Billie agrees to move to Texas with him. After the couple arrives in sleepy Calderville, Billie discovers that the water isn't safe to drink and quickly deduces that the problem might be the result of more than governmental ineptitude. She starts reporting the story, which threatens her employment at a bank whose managers are averse to any of the staff making waves. Meanwhile, she juggles domestic crises, including her teenage son's opioid addiction and her discovery that Cole has had an affair. Dixon's plot is at once overstuffed and underheated, with too much fat and too little tension. When the action finally kicks into gear, it leans too heavily on well-worn intrepid reporter tropes. This disappoints.
