The Skywater Fiction Collection-The Storm Next Door

Sheriff Darrell Halvorson is barely holding the rural town of Hayford, Minnesota, together when a registered sex offender moves into the trailer park. A community already divided between born-and-raised locals and the migrant worker trailer park population now threatens to tear at the seams. As policing and personal tensions push Halvorson to the brink, a tornado tears through the trailer park with little warning. When the dust settles, two people are missing: fourteen-year-old Luciana Rodriquez, and her neighbor, Ray Albee, the sex offender.Thrust into a desperate search, Halvorson races against time and a swelling tide of fear and suspicion. Can he find Luciana before townspeople take matters into their own hands? Along the way, dark secrets surface, challenging everything he believes about the tight-knit community.The Storm Next Door is a gripping, slow-burn crime thriller that explores the boundaries of forgiveness, justice, and vengeance told through multiple narrators:Gina Rodriquez is a single mother delighted about a promotion at work, until it means she's in charge of the town's new sex offender, who happens to be her neighbor. Gina's daughter, Luciana, has eyes on dating a popular boy and would rather people just stop talking about the sex offender next door. Ray Albee, paroled sex offender, just wants to bide his time, keeping his head down and his name out of the newspaper. Sheriff Halvorson, with mounting uncertainties in his personal life, must put those aside to focus on the job he never really wanted but was sworn to fulfill. Can he save Luciana from the missing sex offender, or is it Albee who really needs saving? Can he do either without tearing his town - and his family - apart?