When the River Froze (Paperback)

When the River Froze: A Novel of Winter, Loss, and New Life

A novel about the man nobody knew was drowning — and the woman he pulled out of the snow.

Luke Harmon drives a state snowplow on the river roads of New Hampshire, the same routes his father drove for thirty years. Since the funeral, Luke has been drinking in secret — a thermos in the cab, a bottle in the garage, a life held together by routine and lies nobody has caught yet. Then, on the worst night of the winter, he nearly drives past a pair of hazard lights buried under a drift on Route 12A — and digs out Jess Callahan, twenty days sober, half-frozen, and running from the house that was about to take her down for good.

Jess has one thing left to fight for: her two-year-old daughter, Wren, safe with her grandmother under a state safety plan while Jess tries to prove she can stay sober, stay housed, and stay. Two recoveries. One long winter. The same church-basement meetings in a small river town — where Luke's secret finally surfaces the night his plow slides into a ditch, and where a retired foreman with thirty years sober and a pot of coffee is waiting with a saved seat.

Through a sponsor's blunt love, a mother's kitchen-table reckoning, a custody hearing, and the night the ice goes out on the Connecticut River, When the River Froze follows both of them — his hidden drinking and her fragile new life — toward the first thaw of spring. Honest about addiction without ever glamorizing it. Honest about consequences without ever losing hope. And truthful about the ending: some rescues take all winter, and the people who save us are rarely saved themselves — yet.

For readers of Second Chance and anyone who has ever white-knuckled through a season they weren't sure they'd survive — this is a story about the second rescue: the one that happens one day at a time.

Steven Lavoie writes recovery fiction from the Upper Valley of New Hampshire — honest novels about addiction, family, and the long road back, told by a man who knows the territory.

Also available as an ebook: https://payhip.com/b/HvXSw