There is a River

Callie Clemmens, 10, felt herself being pulled by an invisible canvas belt to the dreaded Watford Shoe, where all her relatives ended up as gray ghosts for life. Callie, in her desperation not to attend, found answers when her family moved to a tiny cottage on the Monocacy river, where gay vacationers in ten cottages around hers brought joy and tragedy into her life but erased the conveyor belt forever by what happened in a quiet meadow, a thing Callie thought would never happen.

-- Jacquelyn Hartland