Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

The Miller family has lived on the farm in Miller's Valley for two centuries.  The land often flooded when the waters of Miller's creek rose but it seems to have gotten worse lately.  Then the government sends a man to visit the families in the valley. He offers them new homes on higher land and the promise of a more modern life with great recreational opportunities connected to a new lake -a lake created by a new dam that will flood the valley and bury the old town. Eleven year old Mimi Miller cannot imagine a life anywhere but on her family farm and agrees with her father's plan to resist selling.  But change will come and not just with a dam and a lake.  Families don't stay the same.  People die.  Discovering the secrets that people keep can even change your view of the past. Home might not have anything to do with land or buildings.  The beginning of  Mimi's story is full of references to life in the 60's that will make the reader of a certain age nod with recognition but like most of Quindlen's books, this is about the many different ways we can be family.