Sue Boggio and Mare Pearl return in A Growing Season to Esperanza, New Mexico, the setting of their first book, Sunlight and Shadow. Esperanza is a community at the crossroads where a devastating drought threatens the farming community's very survival. Vultures circle in the form of developers who see failing farms as ripe pickings. Court battles pit the endangered silvery minnow against the farmers as the once mighty Rio Grande shrinks from its banks.