Watertown Fires follows the stories of Jared and Malachi, one-time childhood friends, both trying to escape their depressed Midwest factory town by the end of the summer.
Jared plans to transfer from the local community college to Michigan State at the end of the summer. He’d been looking forward to this next chapter in his life, but finds out leaving his longtime girlfriend Danielle is weighing heavy on his heart. He also has another problem. Watertown’s powerful county prosecutor, Lionel Michaels, hates Jared because of Jared’s activist uncle, who is considered Watertown’s community leader. Lionel’s hatred for Jared’s uncle means that Jared takes the brunt of the county prosecutor’s abuse and harassment. While the prosecutor is going out of his way to make Jared’s life a living hell, Lionel’s beautiful wife, Cindi, takes a liking to Jared and wouldn’t mind seeing her friendship with him evolve into something more than playful flirting. Though Jared has a girlfriend he loves, he finds Cindi’s advances very tempting.
Malachi has been living in the streets of Watertown ever since his mother ran off to Texas with a man. Watertown’s biggest criminal, Tony Stone, took Malachi under his wing and molded him into his right-hand man. Malachi’s nemesis is JR, a hardened thug, who at one point had a steamy and abusive relationship with Malachi’s mother. Malachi has had enough of the street life and plans to leave Watertown and move to Texas to reconcile with his mother at the end of the summer. But a sinister plan by JR to eliminate Tony puts Malachi’s future in jeopardy—and his future may be decided by the contents of a manila envelope Tony gives to him. The contents of the envelope are so explosive that both JR and the police are willing to take lethal measures to get it from Malachi.
I’ve always been fascinated by small town life…...mostly because I grew up in one! (A little bias right?)
Small towns can be deceivingly multi-layered. On the outside people see tranquil, colloquial images of Americana and an undisturbed submission to the ‘simple life’. But in every small town there are hidden stories of struggles, depression and hopelessness. Often small towns have an ignored darker, sinister side, particularly those economically left in the past. That’s what Watertown Fires is, the untold and ignored darker stories of small town life in Midwest factory towns.
- David
