In the waning days of World War I, William K. Dean was brutally murdered, his body hog-tied and dumped in a rainwater cistern on his farm in the quiet town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Suspicion quickly fell on Dean's wife, an invalid in the early stages of dementia. Her friends, outraged at the accusations, pointed instead to a former tenant of Dean’s, whom many suspected of being a German spy. Others believed that Dean's best friend, a politically powerful banker and judge, was involved.

Deep Water is based on extensive research into the Dean murder, including thousands of pages of FBI documents, Grand Jury testimonies, newspaper accounts, private correspondence, and the archives of the Jaffrey Historical Society.

Kenneth Sheldon is a freelance author, editor, and playwright. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Acoustic Guitar to Yankee Magazine, where he was formerly a columnist. He has written or contributed to books published by Yankee, Time-Life, Rodale, and others, and was formerly the West Coast Bureau Chief for Byte magazine His book Welcome to Frost Heaves, a collection of Yankee humor was published by in 2015. He lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.