Floodgates (Faye Longchamp Archaeological Mysteries #5)

2011 - Mississippi Author Award Winner

"Evans has written a fascinating tale linking the history of New Orleans' levee system to the present and weaving into the story aspects of the city's widely diverse cultures." —Booklist STARRED review

Centuries of tragedy shadow New Orleans: wars, slavery, and a monumental flood that killed a thousand people and still threatens to wash all that history away.

Faye Longchamp and her team of archaeologists, fighting to save New Orleans' past, are horrified when they discover a corpse that's far too new to be an archaeological find. The police presume it's just another dead body in the long, sad sequence of bodies left by Hurricane Katrina, until Faye shows them a truth that only an archaeologist could see: the debris piled on top of the dead woman is all wrong. Someone brought Shelly Broussard to this flooded-out house and left her dead body behind.

Faye and her assistant Joe Wolf Mantooth are drawn into the investigation by a detective who believes their professional expertise is critical to the case. They quickly learn that trouble swirled around the victim like winds around the eye of a hurricane. Is Shelly's heroic rescue work in the aftermath of Katrina the reason for her death? Or does the sheaf of photos in her work files hold the answer? Will Faye and Joe be the next victims engulfed in this deadly deception?