Book #1 in the Old Los Angeles Series:

In Los Angeles in 1870, life was cheap and water could cost you everything. When the body of the water overseer, Bert Rivers, floats up out of her irrigation ditch, winemaker and healing woman Maddie Wilcox finds herself defending the town’s most notorious madam. To save the one person she knows is innocent (at least, of the murder), she must find out who killed Mr. Rivers, a chase that will uncover the terrible truth about the people she thought were her friends.