Wanda Titus

The River TestamentIn the shadowed lumber towns of the 19th-century Ottawa Valley, the river keeps more than secrets - it keeps score. When the carriage of Henri Marchand shatters on a rain-slick parish road just before Christmas, his widow Devon inherits more than a prosperous mill. Beneath her husband's legacy lie unanswered questions, a watch gone missing, and the quiet resistance of men who know the river remembers what people try to forget.
As Devon struggles to protect the mill that anchors the town, Clara Pembroke - a determined young reporter - and Sergeant Joseph LaBelle begin to uncover the fragments of a buried crime. Their search draws them into a decades-old betrayal tied to stolen land, a silenced witness, and a wheel that has turned faithfully for generations. Across seasons of thaw and flood, heat and frost, the past presses closer.
Some truths demand patience. Others demand reckoning. The River Testament is a sweeping historical mystery about inheritance, justice, and the enduring memory of water - where what is taken must, eventually, be returned.