The Boat Before Monday

About this book

In the summer of 1993 the Mississippi climbs to a record, and eleven-year-old Owen Tully of Gilead, Illinois, does what he always does: he holds the sandbag open and tries not to be noticed. Then, on a July night on the levee road, the dump truck his father is driving runs off the edge and crushes the legs of his best friend's mother. Owen was in the cab. Everyone believes he was asleep. Now the river has swallowed the town, his father is the county's favorite hero, and at nine o'clock Monday morning Owen must give a sworn statement at the courthouse. On the Sunday night before, his friend Tess asks him to row her across the drowned streets to rescue a coffee can of family papers from her flooded house. It is a long way across black water, and Owen has until morning to decide what he will say.