In this novel, Hiram Tobit returns to Appalachia after serving in World War I and works as a Marine Corps recruiter. Saddened by changes to his community, he is refreshed to find a young single mother and her daughter who cling to old-fashioned values. After a brutal murder, Hiram joins his estranged father, Sloane, whose drunken past Hiram had blamed for the deaths of his brother and mother, in an attempt to capture the culprit. “Charles Dodd White has written this rich novel of the mountains as though he’s been saving every word of it for a lifetime. A book full of beauty and blood and bone, a story that carries the reader through time, through lives, through dirt and fire.”—Crystal Wilkinson. “An elegant structure for a grim psalm.”—Rob Neufeld. The author, Charles Dodd White, is the award-winning author of three previous novels, a story collection and an essay collection. He teaches English at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville.
Charleston, West Virginia: Shotgun Honey Books, a 2022 paperback edition of a 2010 release. 226 pages. Trade paperback.