Sara Greystone's career as a public defender is spiraling after a disastrous court case, and now her husband's IT career is also in jeopardy. A move to California is supposed to get them both back on their feet, but the state is in the midst of a crippling economic downturn-and then Sara's mother falls seriously ill. In the face of migration, illness, unemployment, and the tantalising possibility of infidelity, Sara has to work out who she is and what she really wants.

Spanning 1997 to 2012, Dry River echoes Wallace Stegner's classic Angle of Repose, moving across place and time to chart the slow collapse of a marriage alongside a declining US economy.