Book excerpt: The Secrets of Eden's Dam by K. L. Dempsey might be his finest and most personal novel to date. It's everything you'd expect from the author of The Unholy Vengeance and The Vanishing Pharmacist-richly developed characters that allow the reader to be entertained by a mixture of suspense, action, and education of medical issues. The novel begins with Doctor Graham Harding returning to his hometown of Eden's Dam. Once a thriving location where the governor of the state would make special trips to purchase the town's twelve different German sausages along with its outstanding pastries, it was now just another of the many ghost towns that made up North Dakota with their local mysteries and oddities. Today Graham looked across the flowing Sheyenne River at the house that still stood, where his best friend's sister Victoria Hanson had been murdered. He had walked inside that house now for the last twenty years, visualizing her last moments as she had fought for her life against a man who had left but a single clue, a man's expensive cologne with its fragrance on her body and clothes. Harding had made a joint promise with his best friend that they would find the killer and bring him to justice. Now his friend, now dead, leaves the promise still unfilled in the hands of Graham. With the redemptive power that comes from determination, Graham intends to keep his promise. Eden's Dam is a story about promises made and promises kept with a blend of love and tenderness mixed in.