Fiction as a Filter: On Writing the American West’s Water Crisis

Years ago, during the Great Recession, I attended an event sponsored by an environmental organization that had formed in protest to a planned dam construction project on the Cache La Poudre River in northern Colorado. At the time, my husband and I owned water rights that drew from that river system, which we used to irrigate our small-scale vegetable farm. Most of the farmers in our rural community were in favor of the dam, but as environmentalists, we opposed it. I admired the work the group wa