The Wash

Like the torrential flash floods that plague the town of Vista Linda, California, The Wash sweeps you up, drags you beneath its currents and desperately tries to drown you in the silt below. Clyde Derrick's excruciatingly intimate prose follows a boy contending with his mother's disappearance in the flood, a catatonic father, a racist brother, murderous ancestors and a grandmother's mistaken profession in a brothel. The Wash weaves a powerful family tapestry that proves even the strongest of us survive the turmoil as changed, and perhaps wiser, people.