Showing Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood by Jame Richards

Sixteen-year-old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel's hired boy. It's a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it's a love that could get Celestia disowned.

These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing 20 million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below - the town where Peter lives with his father. The town where Celestia has just arrived to join him.

This searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance and a tragic event in U.S. history.