Where the Waters Remember

Sometimes the family that changes your life is the one you never expected to find.At thirty-five, Mark Hayworth has built a comfortable life beneath the neon lights of Tulsa, far from the small Cherokee Nation community where he grew up. A mixed-blood Cherokee who has spent years balancing two worlds, Mark has convinced himself that Berryfield belongs to his past.Then his uncle dies.Called home to settle what Charlie Ticahneeskee left behind, Mark returns to the wooded hills, clear creeks, and waterfalls of the Oklahoma Ozarks-and meets Jacob Carter.Jake is everything Mark isn’t: country, rough around the edges, and rooted to the land Mark thought he’d outgrown. Yet almost from the moment they meet, something clicks. Not romance. Something different, and in its own way, something deeper. In a remarkably short time, the two men become best friends, then something closer to brothers-two people who simply recognize that they’ve found one of their own.And then there is Tyler.Eighteen, alone, and struggling to survive after aging out of a life that never gave him much reason to trust anyone, Tyler is already fighting battles Mark and Jake can only begin to understand. When their lives cross his, helping him isn’t simple. Tyler’s journey will take him through homelessness, addiction, fear, and choices that threaten to pull him beyond the reach of the people beginning to care about him.When Tyler disappears, Mark and Jake go looking.Their search carries them away from the quiet mountains and waterfalls of Berryfield and back beneath the neon glow of Tulsa, into a world neither man is prepared for-and forces them to decide just how far they’ll go for someone who has begun to feel like family.Set against the rural beauty of the Oklahoma Ozarks of the Cherokee Nation and the restless lights of Tulsa, Where the Waters Remember is a story of Cherokee roots, addiction and recovery, unexpected brotherhood, and three lives drawn together by something stronger than blood.Because sometimes home isn’t simply the place you come from.Sometimes it’s the people who refuse to stop looking for you.