Dead River — Bill Lightle

Dead River is a timely environmental thriller about the destruction of the Flint River and Lake Blackshear in Georgia, and the secrets behind it. Two young newspaper reporters, Abby Sinclair and John Maynard, are assigned to the story but they could never have imagined the dangers that would confront them. The reporters are caught between people fighting to preserve the river's natural beauty and powerful forces out to destroy it. From the book: Tony was on the big river now. He knew its moods, its bends, where the fish were and where they weren't from month to month. He had been reared along the river by parents who had taught him these things when he was a little boy. His father had taught him how to bait both a hook and trotline and how to skin and deep fry snapping turtles, and do the same with alligator tail. As a boy, he swam near the sandbars and wasn't bothered at all by the alligators in the sun fifty yards away. Early on he thought them more beautiful than dangerous. He believed that as a man, too.