One woman`s environmental crusade makes her unpopular with the locals in this novel by the bestselling author of THE SUMMER I DARED. Novelist Annie Barnes returns to the hometown she loathes, Middle River, whose goings-on were famously chronicled in Grace Metalious`s notorious novel, PEYTON PLACE. Like Grace, Annie is engaged in digging up scandal, but her concerns have nothing to do with the local sexual peccadilloes; rather, Annie wants to know if the emissions from the local paper mill caused her mother`s death and her sister`s illness.