ABOUT
THE BOOK

Living with an eccentric little brother can be tough. Falling through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to assembled onlookers? That solidifies your status as an outcast.

What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful hallucination was her entire town – buildings and people – floating underwater.

Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer’s field. Another is found in the cemetery. The residents of Haventon soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that their homes will eventually be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and long-simmering secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat.

Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason’s keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.