Angie Romines

And The Floods Came Up by Angie Romines

A fearsome flood is about to bear down on Cutler County, and no one sees it coming—no one except seventeen-year-old Cheyenne. She can feel the waters rising in her bones. Life in Eastern Kentucky has been unkind to Cheyenne. Her boyfriend comes home from his shift at the coal mine drunk and angry as sin. Her only friend is ditching their hometown and the middle-aged Bible Camp clown she married in high school. Her daddy’s been gone since before she had memories, and her drug-addict mama went missing months ago.

But Cheyenne’s mother did her one favor before she disappeared—she warned Cheyenne to get the hell out of Cutler County before the gift took hold. Her mama knew better than anyone that place, with its kudzu-covered mountains and ancient indigenous bloodlines amalgamating, could drag a person to the bottom and never release them.

Told from multiple points-of-view, AND THE FLOODS CAME UP blends the subtle, setting-based magical realism of Alice Hoffman’s RED GARDEN with the “Hillbilly Gothic” style of Don Pollock and the gritty, braided narratives of Laura McHugh’s THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD.

I have an MFA in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University where I also teach English to wide-eyed freshmen. Excerpts from AND THE FLOODS CAME UP have been published or are forthcoming in The Bangalore Review, Silver Pen, and Bookends Review. Other work of mine has been published in Blinders Literary Journal, The Bind, 1888 Center, and elsewhere.

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