The Floating Girls comes to The Night the River Wept, a contemporary Georgia story about a small-town, stay-at-home wife who suffers a tragic miscarriage and finds herself completely lost – until a job volunteering at the local police station becomes the opportunity to investigate the county’s most notorious cold case.
Georgia Writers Museum will host Patrick as its “Meet the Author” presenter on Aug. 7 at The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton.
In The Night the River Wept, Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always dreamed of being. But that proves to be more difficult than expected, and Arlene feels desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things.
And to get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.
She seizes the change of pace that comes with taking a job at her local police precinct. To cope with her boredom on the job, she starts poking around old case files and unearths a cold case, the Deck River Tragedy, that involved the murder of three children followed days later by the prime suspect’s suicide.
Convinced this case can be solved, Arlene recruits the suspect’s prickly, investigative aunt and the station’s strait-laced, tight-lipped receptionist, and reopens the case.
“The Night the River Wept is a page-turning exploration of small-town secrets and the far-reaching effects of tragedy,” New York Times bestselling author Kristy Woodson Harvey wrote. “With wit and wisdom, Lo Patrick weaves an unforgettable story of heartbreak, love, and second chances – and proves herself as a compelling new voice in Southern fiction.”
Bestselling author Beth Duke described the book as 'An intriguing mystery that will have you turning pages until the wee hours of the morning.'
Patrick is a former lawyer who grew up outside Atlanta before attending Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She remained there for seven years as a concert promoter, model booker, and musician before eventually attending law school at the University of Miami.
She graduated magna cum laude, began writing, and moved back to Georgia, where she lives with her husband and two children. The Floating Girls was her debut novel and a finalist for the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction. It was named among the 2023 Books All Georgians Should Read by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Georgia Center for the Book.
The GWM Meet the Author event with Lo Patrick will begin at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 each or $35 each for two or more and include Chef Brent’s soon-to-be-famous Deck River BBQ sliders and sides.
Visit GWM online at georgiawritersmuseum.org and then the Events AND Meet the Author tabs to order tickets now.