Still Waters

Still Waters, written by Sara Warner, was published in 2012 and won the Grand Prize for Fiction in the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Warner, a third-generation Floridian and environmentalist, grounds this cross-genre novel—part mystery, part environmental thriller, part romance—within the real-world stakes of public waterways and private interests.

Teena Shostekovich, a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) researcher specializing in water boundary rights, returns to her Tampa-area home one evening to discover that her laptop’s hard drive was stolen. The missing data includes her in-progress novel about protagonist Jessie Weston, a fictionalized version of Jessie Wesson, a local woman whose family is deeply involved in Teena’s current case. The story of Still Waters is told through dual narratives: Teena’s real-life search for the truth about the Wesson case is intertwined with chapters from her stolen novel.

Upon discovering the theft, Teena immediately suspects a link between her ongoing DEP investigation into the Wesson ranch and a covert scheme to privatize state waterways. Her boss warns of pushback from politically powerful interests who support privatization. Meanwhile, her ex-husband Mack, who works overseas planning waterways for a global company, reaches out to warn Teena that the case seems to have connections to international terrorism.

The thief taunts Teena with cryptic emails, claiming he can aid her writerly aspirations, and they develop a flirtatious correspondence. Detective Logan Deo is assigned to her case, and as they work together, a romance develops between them. As Teena digs deeper into the theft and DEP politics, she uncovers a web of shady lawyers, developers, and political appointees, and the pressure intensifies when she becomes the focus of anti-terrorist surveillance.

Teena’s novel chapters, interspersed with the real-life action of her timeline, introduce Jessie Weston, a hardened cowgirl who left her family’s ranch years ago but has returned amid a property dispute: Her father built a dike on the lakebed, causing ecological damage and drawing the ire of state regulators. Jessie’s brother now wants to sell the land that the dike exposed to developers, but as the novel’s chapters unfold, she develops a relationship with the state surveyor who is mapping the land, creating conflict at home. 

As Teena’s investigation continues, Logan is revealed to be an FBI agent and the thief of Teena’s hard drive; the FBI was investigating possible connections to a terrorist attack on a waterway in Pakistan because of her overseas work with Mack before their divorce. Teena sees a former DEP employee in a photo and recognizes him from years ago, when she was traveling with Mack, as a man named Haji.

With this revelation, they finally understand the truth: Haji has been living and working undercover at the Wesson ranch while developing a plan to poison the local waterways from their land, similar to an attack he instigated in Pakistan. Teena and the real-life Jessie Wesson finally meet when Teena calls Jessie to warn her about Haji, whom Jessie realizes is now working at her ranch.

In a climactic scene, Teena and Logan board a helicopter to track down Haji, who is attempting to sabotage the waterway. They find him after he poisons the water but before he manages to blow up the dike and spread the poison even further. Haji shoots at the helicopter but is knocked down by Jessie on horseback—she immediately headed out to help after receiving a message from Teena. Although they cannot protect the wildlife immediately surrounding the dike, they do prevent the poison from entering the waterway and causing untold damage across the state.

After the furor dies down, Jessie decides to take down the dike and return the lake to its natural state. Logan returns Teena’s partially finished novel, but that is the last she sees of him. Although she felt they were headed toward a romance, she now understands that although Logan cares for her, the job comes first. She reflects that, strangely, she feels uplifted and powerful after their short affair and is ready to move into the future.