Day the Falls Stood Still (Buchanan)

The Day the Falls Stood Still 
Cathy Marie Buchanan, 2009
Hyperion Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401341367


Summary
1915. The dawn of the hydroelectric power era in Niagara Falls. Seventeen-year-old Bess Heath has led a sheltered existence as the youngest daughter of the director of the Niagara Power Company. After graduation day at her boarding school, she is impatient to return to her picturesque family home near Niagara Falls.

But when she arrives, nothing is as she had left it. Her father has lost his job at the power company, her mother is reduced to taking in sewing from the society ladies she once entertained, and Isabel, her vivacious older sister, is a shadow of her former self. She has shut herself in her bedroom, barely eating—and harboring a secret.

The night of her return, Bess meets Tom Cole by chance on a trolley platform. She finds herself inexplicably drawn to him—against her family's strong objections. He is not from their world. Rough-hewn and fearless, he lives off what the river provides, and he has an uncanny ability to predict the whims of the falls. river rescues render him a local hero and cast him as a threat to the power companies who seek to harness the power of the falls for themselves.

As the paths of Bess and Tom become entwined, Bess must make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her family and her future. (From the publisher.)