Into the Deep: a Story of Resolution

Annis Ward Jackson sets this novel against a backdrop of beautiful Watauga Lake in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Violet Thurston Oliver is a descendant of pioneers and has no intention of ever vacating the land that has been in her family for nearly two hundred years. However, Violet discovers that so-called progress grinds on with little concern for personal attachments. Proud, stoic, and self-sufficient, Violet withstands an abusive marriage and forced relocation from her beloved farm in the late 1940's when the Tennessee Valley Authority covered over six thousand acres with a dam to provide electricity and recreational opportunities. The lake has been Violet's sorrow and her salvation.  Will Violet's fifty-year-old secret remain safe or will it  rise from the depths and threaten the remaining years of a life of hard work, integrity and perserverance?   Fast forward to 1995 and Sheriff Floyd Lawrence who is faced with slowing down his search for other, more pressing crimes, to investigating a cold case so obscure that he is tempted to give up.