A classic of politics, murder, and espionage "Watershed has all the makings of a social thriller...In this novel about water and the struggle for a life free of injustice, the mix doesn't just work, it flows." — Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio "It’s hard . . . to imagine a novelist today with fresher eyes than Percival Everett."―Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets. Everett mines history for this one, focusing on the relationship between Native American activists and Black Panther groups who bonded over their shared enemies in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Watershed is an excellent example of Percival Everett’s famed bitingly political narrative style.

Set in 1937 in rural Tennessee, with the construction of a monumental dam serving as background--a cinematically biblical effort to harness elemental forces and bring power to the people--Watershed delivers a gripping story of characters whose ambitions and yearnings threaten to overflow the banks of their time and place. Nathan, an engineer hiding from his past, and Claire, a small-town housewife, struggle to find their footing in the newly-electrified, job-hungry, post-Depression South. As Nathan wrestles with the burdens of a secret guilt and tangled love, Claire struggles to balance motherhood and a newfound freedom that awakens ambitions and a sexuality she hadn't known she possessed. The arrival of electricity in the rural community--where violence, prostitution, and dog-fighting are commonplace--thrusts together the federal and local worlds, in an evocative feat of storytelling in the vein of Kent Haruf's Plainsong, and Ron Rash's Serena.

A personal health crisis, stories from environmental refugees, and our climate in danger prompt a meditation on intimate connections between the health of the body and the health of the ecosystem The body of the earth, beset by a climate in crisis, experiences drought much like the human body experiences thirst, as Ranae Lenor Hanson’s body did as a warning sign of the disease that would change her life: Type 1 diabetes. What if we tended to an ailing ecosystem just as Hanson learned to care for herself in the throes of a chronic medical condition. This is the possibility explored in a work that is at once a memoir of illness and health, a contemplation of the surrounding natural world in distress, and a reflection on the ways these come together in personal, local, and global opportunities for healing. Beginning with memories from a childhood nurtured among the waters of Minnesota, Watershed follows the streams and tributaries that connect us to our world and to each other, as revealed in the life stories of Hanson’s students, Minnesotans driven from their faraway homelands by climate disruption. The book’s currents carry us to threatened mangrove swamps in Saudi Arabia, to drought-stricken Ethiopia, to rocks bearing ancient messages above crooked rivers in northern Minnesota, to a diabetic crisis in an ICU bed at a St. Paul hospital. With the benefit of gentle insight and a broad worldview, Hanson encourages us at every turn to find our own way, to discover how the health of our bodies and the health of the world they inhabit are inextricably linked and how attending, and tending, to their shared distress can lead to a genuine, grounded wellbeing. When, in the grip of a global pandemic, humans drastically change their behavior to preserve human life, we also see how the earth breathes more freely as a result. In light of that lesson, Watershed helps us to consider our place and our part in the health and healing of the world around us.

Water is our most vital resource, yet few understand even the basics of watershed ecology. This new edition has been updated to reflect growing environmental challenges, such as climate change, the insidious spread of invasive species and the loss of biodiversity. Watersheds: A Practical Handbook for Healthy Water is an engaging and informative introduction to ecology and environmental issues that focus on water-related issues. Well suited for youth or general readers of any age, Watersheds combines a profusion of beautiful illustrations with non-technical and accessible text, making it attractive as well as informative. The book explains ecological principles, environmental challenges, introduces North America's major biological regions, outlines the complexities of water and nutrient cycles and explains the ecology of wetlands and waterways. Watersheds also explains some of the major environmental issues facing North America, including air pollution, water pollution, invasive exotic species, and habitat loss and destruction. Watersheds provides detailed information on: water and nutrient cycles bioregions and aquatic habitats exotic species invasions water and air pollution ecological restoration habitat loss. While Watersheds identifies and explains multiple ecological challenges, the book is engaging, empowering, and positive, providing practical "How Can I Help?" sections aimed to inspire participation in efforts to restore watersheds and protect the environment. As the book explains, what's good for one's local watershed is also good for the planet -- so we can all help protect and restore our natural environment.

As Americans try to better manage and protect the natural resources of our watersheds, is politics getting in the way? Why does watershed management end up being so political? In Embracing Watershed Politics, political scientists Edella Schlager and William Blomquist provide timely illustrations and thought-provoking explanations of why political considerations are essential, unavoidable, and in some ways even desirable elements of decision making about water and watersheds. With decades of combined study of water management in the United States, they focus on the many contending interests and communities found in America's watersheds, the fundamental dimensions of decision making, and the impacts of science, complexity, and uncertainty on watershed management. Enriched by case studies of the organizations and decision making processes in several major U.S. watersheds (the Delaware River Basin, San Gabriel River, Platte River, and the Columbia River Basin), Embracing Watershed Politics presents a reasoned explanation of why there are so few watershed-scale integrated management agencies and how the more diverse multi-organizational arrangements found in the vast majorities of watersheds work. Although the presence of multiple organizations representing a multitude of communities of interest complicates watershed management, these institutional arrangements can-under certain conditions-suit the complexity and uncertainty associated with watershed management in the twenty-first century.

Thinking Like a Watershed points our understanding of our relationship to the land in new directions. It is shaped by the bioregional visions of the great explorer John Wesley Powell, who articulated the notion that the arid American West should be seen as a mosaic of watersheds, and the pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold, who put forward the concept of bringing conscience to bear within the realm of “the land ethic.” Produced in conjunction with the documentary radio series entitled Watersheds as Commons, this book comprises essays and interviews from a diverse group of southwesterners including members of Tewa, Tohono O’odham, Hopi, Navajo, Hispano, and Anglo cultures. Their varied cultural perspectives are shaped by consciousness and resilience through having successfully endured the aridity and harshness of southwestern environments over time.

For centuries, the pristine lands of the Watershed were at peace. But now the Watershed has been breached and a poisonous evil flows forth. Only a handful of heroes remain to defent what is pure, and they must fight a battle of hope against a dark god who has one profound and all-consuming thirst--the destruction of the Watershed.