Sara B. Fraser paints for readers how life in a nothing upstate New York town in the ’90s might look: bleak and gritty. Wattsville was a booming manufacturing town on the Otis River. But now, the mills are closed. The windows boarded up. The same people frequent the same bars every day without fail. What once was a prosperous place is now somewhere riddled with substance abuse, poverty, violence, and hush-hush secrets. But only the river bears witness to all these secrets — and only the river can divulge the truth. 

At the heart of these secrets is one family. When Carol’s daughter, Garnet, is caught in the crosshairs of justice and her former boyfriend’s deceit, Carol and her best friend Sam plot to prove Garnet's innocence. Told with beauty and tenderness against the landscape of forgotten everyday America, Fraser’s JUST RIVER connects the complexity and danger we all contain.