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| Elbow River Now and During the 2013 Flood |
Debut author JE Barnard’s first contemporary suspense
novel, When the Flood Falls, won the 2016 Unhanged Arthur Award and was
published this year by Dundurn Press of Toronto. She lives in a vine-covered
cottage between the Bow and Elbow Rivers, both of which flooded in 2013 and
helped inspire her debut crime novel. Learn more about JE at her website.
Rising River, Rising Tension….
In When the Flood Falls, burnt-out ex-Mountie Lacey McCrae arrives in
the tiny foothills town of Bragg Creek, Alberta. She’s hoping for solitude and
healing. What she finds instead is emotional turmoil that rivals the currents
in the melt-swollen Elbow River. Her old university roommate, who offered her
shelter, is a paranoid wreck after months of a nighttime prowler, and the whole
town is braced for a possible recurrence of the flood that very nearly destroyed
it five years ago. Standing on the brink of the swirling torrent is the
brand-new Arts Museum, with its ground-level classrooms and below-ground art
vault.
The town is real, the
massive 2013 flood left very real scars, and the collective breath-holding
every June—until the dense snow on the mountain peaks has come gently down the
river—is real.
However, to fit in my fictional
art museum along the riverbank, I had to arbitrarily triple the distance
between the riverbank and the West Bragg road. For my lovely imaginary building,
think log walls and three-storey glass façades on both the river and the road frontages.
There’s a theatre wing and a two-storey museum wing, a catering-sized stainless
kitchen, classrooms, art library, offices, meeting rooms, and of course the
vault—all in a pristine wilderness setting with a view upriver to shining
mountain peaks.
On a steep, craggy hillside
above the new facility, I carved out a curving road and built several luxurious
log homes for the fictional hockey stars and oil-company executives (including
Lacey’s new roommate) that I added to the local population. At the top, where
the real hill flattens out in a small plateau, is an imaginary oil baron’s
lavish country getaway, complete with two pools, a riding stable, and a
helicopter landing pad—installed after the 2013 flood so he would not be cut
off from the world again if the bridge went under. This simple hacienda-style
sprawl with its white stucco walls and clay-tile roof is deceptive. It looks
like a single-storey from the entrance gates but the house extends three levels
down the hillside, maximizing the view over the river valley and mountain
peaks. For an addict of fabulous-homes television, there’s no greater bliss
than mentally designing and decorating seven luxury homes and a
multi-millionaire’s entire estate.
How these settings play in When the Flood Falls:
1. In the art vault, Lacey
is nearly crushed to death by a rolling steel rack that weighs a thousand
pounds.
2. On the oil baron’s top
terrace, near the party pool, an overheard snippet of conversation triggers a
murderer during an NHL playoff party.
3. In the surging river
right outside the Art Museum, the hit-and-run vehicle is dumped.
4. In the closed, deserted
Art Museum, on a sultry summer evening, Lacey at last confronts the killer.
With the nearest RCMP post half an hour away, even if she does manage to call
for help, the real trick will be surviving until it arrives.
When the Flood Falls
A Falls Mystery
When a phantom stalker
targets her friend, Lacey McCrae’s crime-busting skills are tested to their
limits.
With her career in tatters
and her marriage receding in the rear-view mirror, ex-RCMP corporal Lacey
McCrae trades her uniform for a tool belt, and the Lower Mainland for the
foothills west of Calgary. Amid the oil barons, hockey stars, and other high
rollers who inhabit the wilderness playground is her old university roommate,
Dee Phillips. Dee’s glossy life was shaken by a reckless driver; now she’s
haunted by a nighttime prowler only she can hear.
As snowmelt swells the icy
river, threatening the only bridge back to civilization, Lacey must make the
call: assume Dee’s in danger and get her out, or decide the prowler is
imaginary and stay, cut off from help if the bridge is swept away.
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