It's 2008 in New Orleans, and hundreds of registered sex offenders who went off the grid during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation have never been found.
The sex-offender story is assigned to Nola Céspedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, who tries to balance her investigation with taking care of her aging mother, seeing her girlfriends, mentoring a teenager, and meeting a mysterious stranger named Bento.
As her research progresses, Nola is gradually drawn in to an underworld of violent predators--a world she struggles to keep separate from her middle-class professional life. Raised in poverty by a single mother in New Orleans' notorious Desire Projects, Nola has her own secrets to hide.
Hell or High Water is forthcoming in hardcover and e-book from St.
Martin's/Thomas Dunne in July 2012.
"In the tradition of P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Lucha Corpi, Joy Castro shows how mystery can be much more than the unraveling of crimes concealed. Hell or High Water is a riveting story of trust betrayed and the struggle toward recovery, an irresistible and compelling novel aptly set in post-Katrina New Orleans."
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PEN/Faulkner Finalist Lorraine M. López, author of Soy la Avon Lady, Homicide Survivors Picnic, and The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters |
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