“Can Do” Kelsey Webb’s senior year begins in disaster. As she turns eighteen just before senior year starts, her father’s in jail, she discovers someone’s stolen $2500 from the school newspaper account, and hears on TV that her newspaper adviser died while out hunting. How can all this be happening in tiny Northeast Pennsylvania’s Rivers [sic] Bend, where nothing ever happens. She and her fellow reporter, her BFF Shania Bean, had such dreams for the paper. Now Editor Webb may not have enough money to print her first issue.
As her beloved role-model adviser exits her life, two men enter. Star quarterback Zeke Rivers asks the plain, school-bookish farm girl Kelsey out on her first date. What’s he want with her? A relationship, and he won’t take no for an answer. Zeke’s father, Dr. Rivers, superintendent of Kelsey’s school district, welcomes her as the school newspaper editor—and then works her to death with “special articles” she must research and write for him. It’s all part of the editor’s job, he says. Didn’t the recently-departed adviser tell her?
By Halloween, Kelsey’s underwater in all her AP classes, neglecting farm chores, and behind on her superintendent’s work. It’s enough to make her quit as editor. How will she ever become the 2016 valedictorian? Meanwhile, Zeke’s getting really serious. Then, a Thanksgiving surprise leaves Kelsey’s family blissfully incredulous. The only people in town who could have pulled it off? The Rivers.
What does this father-son team have in mind for Kelsey? It can’t have to do with the missing money—can it? Or, with the dead teacher?
Within six months, the fate of Rivers Bend will rest in Kelsey’s hands, and those hellbent on its destruction will do everything they can to stop her from saving it. And herself.