When a viral video of a disastrous TV interview puts her reputation on the line, prominent child psychologist, Dr. Willa Watters retreats to Broken Bayou, the town where she spent most of her childhood summers. While visiting her aunt’s old house, she finds some of her unstable mother’s belongings in the attic and uncovers secrets of her harrowing past.

Willa’s hopes for a respite are quickly crushed, not only by what she finds in that attic but also by what’s been found in the bayou. With waters dropping due to drought, mysterious barrels containing human remains have surfaced, alongside something else from Willa’s past, something she never thought she’d see again. Divers, police, and media flood the area, including a news reporter gunning for Willa and Travis Arceneaux—a local deputy and old flame.

Willa’s fate seems eerily tied to the murders. And with no one to trust, she must use her wits to stay above water and make it out alive.

‘Broken Bayou‘ is Jennifer Moorhead’s debut novel but you’d never guess that from the text. The book opens with an impressively smooth introduction to person, place and situation, all redolent with guilty secrets and locked-away memories that are eager to surface.

The story is mostly told using an interior monologue that is well-judged and engaging. I immediately got the sense of Dr Willa Walters as a woman who has created a persona that she had hoped would become a life but who is now in crisis. She’s back in the small town of Broken Bayou, Louisiana, where she spent her childhood summers visiting her aunts. She’s back because she needs to be, not because she wants to be. She knows her visit risks unlocking memories she’s avoided for more than a decade but she needs to reclaim something from the house of her recently deceased aunts and she’s in flight from a public debacle that could end her high-profile Fort Worth career as a podcast guru on child psychology.

In addition to engaging my interest in Willa’s crisis, Jennifer Moorhead hooked my curiosity by providing hints that something bad was about to be uncovered in the town, Something that would make Willa’s situation worse.

I liked the strong sense of place. The descriptions of the town and its people were vivid and cliché-free. They also set the context for plot and provided a tangible bridge to connect that present and the past.

There is a solid serial killer plot at the heart of this novel that is enhanced by approaching it not from the point of view of the killer or the cops hunting the killer but by approaching it sideways by having Willa reluctant stumble into the action.

The exposition of this story was perfectly paced to hook my curiosity, engage me with the main characters as people and slowly but inexorably crank up the tension. By the second half of the book, I was fascinated by watching Willa’s past overwhelm her future so that her present became entirely about trying not to drown.

The final section of the book delivers a very tense and satisfying denouement that caught me completely by surprise but which made a great deal of sense.

I had fun with ‘Broken Bayou‘. I’ll be watching for Jennifer Moorhead’s next novel.

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