PUNTA DE SANGRE

A Novel

Sara McGrath sucks at sales, but real estate is the only growth market in the depressed California coastal town where she's trying to pull together a life for herself and her teenager, Marsi, after her ex, a Silicon Valley venture wannabe, dumped her. Sharks hunt the point breaks where Marsi surfs, and even nastier creatures—realtors, developers, and open-space-hungry environmentalists—troll the multiple listings in Half Moon Bay. Sara's first shot at a million-dollar deal looks like the capital kick-start her dream of a seaweed-products business needs until dead bodies complicate escrow on the old Punta de Sangre Inn. As the inspection clock on her deal runs down and the ripples of violent deaths widen toward Marsi and herself, Sara is forced into a partnership of wits with a taciturn sheriff whose fisherman son may have been victim of more than a storm at sea.

Sara finds herself at the impact point of big issues and their backwash: Around Punta de Sangre ("Blood Point"), powerful land preservation interests clash with greedy developers and their plans to turn great swaths of agricultural land into luxury resort and McMansion developments. Meanwhile, land-rich agribusinesses exploit an underground majority of immigrant workers. And the local fishing fleet and tourist-pandering "chummers" clash with the surfing community over shark-baiting. As the wave of chaos and loss builds, Sara heeds the surfers' mantra: "Eddie would go." Sara goes.

Punta de Sangre won First Place, Special Category, in the California Writers' Club 2007 Jack London Writers Contest.

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"Theresa Donovan is a legitimate and entertaining new voice in crime fiction."
   —John Lescroart, best-selling thriller author

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