Sweetwater Burning

Chas McPherson and his father are shepherds–one of beasts, the other of souls. The hard-crusted, hard-drinking younger McPherson, a misunderstood loner, raises a breed of sheep known as Blackbellies. The father, dying of Parkinson’s, is tendd by a newly hired nurse with a past, Mattie Holden. The father had been a fire-and-brimstone pator whose uncanny ability to detect and then reveal the townspeople’s sins kept them in dread of him. When the home of Sweetwater’s lone Muslim family is burned to the ground, those past fears and grudges contribute to the town turning against the younger McPherson as the suspected arsonist.

Sheriff Kip Edelson methodicaly and conscientiously investigates the arson accusation, and a subsequent one of murder. At the McPherson ranch, Mattie is haunted by a sense that the incapacitated, now-mute father can see into the secrets of her own past. She and Chas draw closer together as mutual emotional needs slowly replace inital antipathy. Surprising developments in town and at the ranch gradually bring them to a reckoning with the once-fierce father and to a journey to forgivness.

Windless Summer

In the town of Rocket, Washington–a summer playground for windsurfers and tourists–a windless summer ignites fear as businesses and residents move away. Rocket’s motel, run by a lonely widower named Tom Jemmet, is hard hit. And Tom has demons of his own: memories of a beautiful wife that still haunt him, and a troubled young daughter whose retreat into a silent world confounds her father and sparks whispers in town.

Swirling around Tom are lives much like his own, townspeople yearning for wind but also for hope, even love. Charlene, a mail clerk, helps care for Tom’s daughter while a secret gnaws at her heart. Lauren, the town vet, has fallen for Tom, who barely notices. And newspaper editor Hap is hatching a foolish plan to save his town.

That’s when a miracle–or something like it–strikes Tom’s rundown motel. Guests who stay in Room 6 begin experiencing sudden acts of fate, both terrible and great. But while tourists descend on Rocket and the town shows new signs of life, the truth about Tom’s motel and teh death of his ife–as well as the secret hopes and fears of everyone around him–are exposed in ways that are both surprising and transforming.