John’s New Frontier

The bridge is failing. The river is rising. Saving one community could destroy another.

John Hollie thought shutting down Site Seven would finally give the survivors time to rebuild. Then a desperate transmission reaches the mountain through an abandoned emergency frequency.

Beyond the newly returned Mississippi, Cedar Reach's only bridge is moving—and no one knows how long it will remain standing.

John, Angelica, Marsha, Carlos, and George travel west to investigate. They discover more than failing steel. The river has been forced from its natural path, debris has turned the bridge into a dam, and a floating settlement downstream is slowly losing the water beneath its homes.

Now storm runoff is racing toward both communities. Eleven barges, low-lying homes, medical supplies, winter seed, and hundreds of lives stand in its path. There is no solution that saves everything.

John can measure the steel and the water. He cannot decide what two communities should sacrifice. To survive, people who distrust outsiders—and one another—must share the truth, the work, and the cost before the river makes the decision for them.

Some structures can be repaired. Others must be allowed to fall.

• A flood-driven rescue beyond the reappeared Mississippi

• A collapsing bridge, displaced rivers, and an American landscape no surviving map can explain

• Hard choices, dry humor, and resourceful survivors rebuilding from the ruins

From USA Today bestselling author A. R. Shaw comes the third book in The Great Wash Out, a post-apocalyptic disaster trilogy about survival, ingenuity, and the difficult work of rebuilding together.