When Water Was Everywhere
Barbara Crane
Paperback ISBN – 978-0-9972609-0-8
Ebook ISBN – 978-0-9972609-1-5
350 pages
Retail price $18.00
Published by Lagoon House Press, 2016
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Once upon a time in Los Angeles, water was everywhere—in rivers that rendered the vast plain a marsh; in underground streams that provided an abundance of water for people, cattle and crops. This is the lush landscape that serves as a backdrop to When Water Was Everywhere. As the story unfolds, Barbara Crane’s precise and lyrical prose, and her deft interweaving of historical fact and human drama, make for the richest of fictional tapestries—both epic and intimate in scale, infused with a sense of loss, but also with hard-won hope and the possibility of redemption.

Rose Smith wants to live among “the oldest things in the world.” While working in Los Angeles, a photo of Peru’s Manchu Picchu attracts her attention. “Stone city, blue sky. Home,” she ruminates. Impulsively, she goes. There she meets a university professor, Carlos Urbina Delgado. They fall in love during a long trip down the dry Peruvian coast into the ancient mountain city of Cuzco. Through Carlos, Rose sees the poverty of the once-proud Inca, ponders the endurance of these and other indigenous peoples and wonders if the world can survive without their presence.

Rose sees Los Angeles differently when she returns. She sees it as a city without a soul, disconnected from its roots in a vanished landscape. Overcome by loneliness, Rose retreats into work. She rediscovers her passion for painting and joins in fighting for the rights of indigenous people. Carlos visits, but she has one more journey she must make: to Guatemala where the indigenous Maya have survived three decades of war. There, Rose searches for answers in the cities’ markets and the country’s highlands. She witnesses violence which pits indigenous against the Army and gets caught up in a drama that nearly ends her life.

This novel of action and ideas, earned Barbara the Silver Medal for fiction in the prestigious ForeWord Magazine’s annual Book of the Year Awards.

© 2016 Barbara Crane. All rights reserved