On a road trip to Flat Water, the home he fled years before, Monty Marinnis must confront the complex and painful loss that drove him away and now demands his return: family. Called back to California for his sister’s wedding, Monty’s journey from the Midwest to the California Coast is also a journey through memory, one complicated by the presence of his adoring, but increasingly frustrated wife Charlotte, from whom Monty has concealed the horrifying details of his family’s fracture and how he remains haunted by what he witnessed as a teenager. 

 

The Marinnis family lost their eldest son in a shocking attack, while Monty watched, helpless. Since that day, he has been obsessed with finding answers to questions that have none: why do bad things happen to some people but not others? Why were they selected to suffer? In Flat Water, Monty will be confronted by brutal truths that rise like sharks from the depths. Faced with such realities, Monty will have to choose between acceptance and self-destruction. Jeremy Broyles’s Flat Water is a sensorial and emotionally rich exploration of guilt, shame, the burden of secrets, and the possibility of redemption. 

 

-Jenny Irish, Author of I Am Faithful and Hatch