"Edgewater"

Garry Cooper, Chico State University grad and Durham resident, plunges into the sometimes shocking world of small-town life with his first novel. Using the name of a development in the Marysville area, his "fictionalized" community harbors, as the subtitle puts it, "Deep Love, Savage Betrayal, Tragic Loss, And Overwhelming Pain."

The tears on the cover suggest immediately that all is not well with at least some of the residents of "Edgewater" ($16.95 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). The page-turning melodrama never abates as Cooper traces the intertwined lives of high school friends who find life after the high can be low indeed.

Though Edgewater is a particular "small river delta town … it is every town, big or small," Cooper writes in the prologue. "After all, a big city, besides the traffic, is really made up of groups of people. The people interact the same. Some are pure, some aren't. Some love deeply, some won't--some can't. … It's okay to cry--both happy tears and the sad ones. You will laugh, you will feel anger and hate. You will feel true goodness and love. You will feel aroused." (The sex is explicit.)

Abel, abused as a kid, is unsteady as a friend in his teen years and beyond. His friend, Seth, drinks overmuch but finds compassion in Mylee (with whom he is secretly in love), while Mylee is swept off her feet in high school by Tony (who captains the football team). 

Tony seems the consummate lover; the two seem headed for a blissful life together--at least in Mylee's dreams. But Tony carries on affairs with nearly every woman he meets and "nearly all in Edgewater knew of his trysts, but none were ever willing to violate the small town's social code of silence and tell Mylee." Mylee will be rocked to her core when she finds out (and you know she'll find out). Then comes her diagnosis.

Layla waits for Ian to return from war, and their love is made more powerful when he doesn't return whole. Achingly, in the midst of a joyful outing, tragedy strikes. 

Samantha faces revenge from a corrupt police captain. 

And so it goes in Edgewater.