"An increasingly gripping southern-crime tale" for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (–Booklist STARRED review)
One of Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Hot New Summer Books"!
Everybody's got good and bad in them. In the end, it just depends which side wins out.
Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Tommy, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always dreamed of being. But that's proving more difficult than she thought, and Arlene is desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things. And get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.
As the summer gives way to a chilly, lonesome fall up in the mountains of northern Georgia, she takes a part-time job bagging evidence at the local police department, which involves about twenty minutes of actual work, and the rest of her shift she reads over old cold cases. One in particular fascinates her: the mysterious deaths of three young brothers murdered on Deck River, followed by the suicide of Mitchell Wright, the prime suspect in the murders.
Arlene becomes obsessed with the case, and with the help of the police department's receptionist and a family friend of the Wrights, she sets out on discovering the truth. She can't help but feel that if she solves the case of the Broderick boys' deaths, she'll find her footing in her young marriage and maybe find what she's been looking for all along.
From the author of The Floating Girls, a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction and a Reader's Digest Editor's Pick, Lo Patrick has once again crafted a story bursting with charm, heartbreak, and memorable characters that leap off the page, a true delight for fans of Southern fiction.
