Cadillac, Oklahoma

Award Finalist: 2017 Best Book Awards, Fiction: Short Story
Sponsored by AmericanBookFest

When you step off the train in Cadillac, Oklahoma, you'll wade through currents of hilarity and romance where the sheriff is in love with the wife of a prominent lawyer, and the banker's widow and a Las Vegas sex worker team up to beautify Cadillac.

Not until a young female reporter cracks open the self-satisfied surface of the town is the folly, anger, and pain revealed. The resentments of tree-huggers, storeowners, and the town fathers ignite over a proposal to create a New England-style town green in this water-starved former Dust Bowl town.

Citizens who don't care about town politics, deal with domestic abuse, religious rivalry and stale marriages. The sheriff, Jake Hale, seeks help from a retired lawyer, Sloane Willard, in an effort to save the life of a teenage girl accused of murdering the father who raped her.

The town's guiding forces of rule following, religion, and guns unite as a praying mass of church-goers overwhelm Jake's attempt to manage an out-of-control hostage situation at Cadillac's Youth Detention Center.

Before you get back on the train, you will have grown to love these people and their thirst for love, beauty, water and justice.