The Fortune — Michael McDowell

Under Elinor's guidance, the Caskey family prospered after the war, not knowing that a dark infernal force was growing in their midst. And Frances, Elinor's favorite daughter never understood her strange yearning for the Perdido River…until the day her babies were born.

Elinor presided over the secret birth, the triumph of the life. And the blood red water of the Perdido continued to claim its own -- both humans and demons -- some in grisly death, some in exquisite surrender.