High water - Peter Tonkin

The Colorado River, artificially tamed in the 1930s, has been resurrected in the early 2000s. The COLORADO, a battered WWII destroyer, serving her last days as a coastguard vessel, waits with her crew for the final farewell. As onlookers gather for the ship's last journey, the millennium's weather systems bring the full power of the river to terrible life. And as Richard Mariner, enmeshed in a sour business deal in storm-shaken Las Vegas, battles to get free and go south, Robin Mariner waits, already aboard the ship and all too aware that the new waterway was never designed to handle the floods coming southward - increasingly certain that only COLORADO can make the vital difference when the power of the river finally, fatally, hits high water.