title: The Water Man's Daughter
author: Emma Ruby-Sachs
description: "[An] assured debut . . . beautifully tense . . . at heart a morality tale." <br>&mdash;<i>Toronto Star</i><br><i>&#160;</i><br>"Ruby-Sachs brings her setting and its cast vibrantly to life: the parching heat, night-time chills, the dirt tracks and clinging Soweto dust, the families living in near-poverty yet touchingly house-proud, while their civic officials boast charmless mansions and giant plasma TVs. . . . [The final] 40 pages . . . gather up the story's themes and plot strands in ways completely unexpected, and exhilarating." <br>&mdash;<i>Globe and Mail</i><br>&#160;<br>"Ruby-Sachs has set herself an impressive agenda for a first novel . . . most notably her ripped-from-the headlines plot, authentic setting, and lively dialogue sprinkled with Zulu words and phrases." <br>&mdash;<i>Edmonton Journal</i><br>&#160;<br>"[An] impressive debut. . . . Plays like a classic whodunit, but its mystery involves how much we really know about others -- especially those people we think we know best." <br>&mdash;<i>Quill &amp; Quire</i>
zlib_text:  
  
   
  Maybe it’s something in the water…
  Sweet Water, Texas—population 1378—possesses one of the highest percentages of Alphas
  and Omegas in the entire United States of America. Maybe it is something in the water, but boys get
  pregnant here. A lot. And regular folks have just kind of gotten used to it.
  One night’s innocent mistake leaves Omega Alex Orlov unclaimed, unwed and very, very
  pregnant. He leaves college in disgrace and flees straight home to the safety of Sweet Water, Texas.
  Alex knows his two very liberal and progressive dads are going to be disappointed and hurt by his
  careless behavior, but he’s shocked and stunned by their angry insistence that he either give up his
  unborn baby or get out.
  He chooses to get—and winds up straight in the arms of his very first boyhood crush, Sheriff
  Ross McClintock.
  Ross tells himself he’s just as disgusted as Alex’s fathers that the golden boy whose flirtatious
  invitations he resolutely refused for so long should have recklessly thrown away