WHAT THE EARTH GAVE BACK

The river gave the town its dead back. It gave back one too many.

When the Nolichucky came out of the gorge, it took two streets, the elementary school, and the old cemetery on the bottom land where Ambrose Mill has buried its people for a hundred years. It took the courthouse annex too, and with it every plat, deed and death certificate in the county. What is left of this town’s memory is one old woman’s notebook and one man’s head.

Tessa Marsh has spent her whole working life arriving before it is too late. She comes through the gorge leading the Cornerstone recovery crew for the first time, with a school to gut, a valley to organize and a crew waiting to see whether she can do it. In Ambrose Mill, everything has already happened.

Asa Ledford has been here the whole time. Third generation at the funeral home on Water Street, he knows every plot, every family and what is written in books the county no longer has. He will not be hurried. Not for her, not for anyone.

Then the count comes up wrong. One name with no grave. A nine-year-old with a crayon list, asking the question the adults keep walking around. And a valley full of strangers in laminated badges that nobody has any way to check.

Somebody buried here was never who the stone said he was, and the truth is lying under ground that is about to be moved.

What the Earth Gave Back is the third Broken Ground novel: Christian romantic suspense with a real faith thread, danger carried by dread instead of gore, and a love story that stays clean. Each book stands alone.