One Foot In Eden
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This brilliant southern gothic novel, by the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash, observes the consequences of love and murder across generations.
The year is 1951 and Holland Winchester, the local thug and a war veteran, has gone missing from his small, backwater South Carolina town. The local sheriff, Will Alexander, has a gut feeling Holland's been murdered but the sheriff can find neither the body nor the killer. He has his suspects but no evidence. And his suspects have their stories, their motives and their truths. But secrets can only stay buried so long.
Told from the perspective of the sheriff, a local farmer, his wife, their son and the sheriff's deputy, One Foot in Eden explores the crime, shifting suspicion, blame and guilt with each new voice.
'A wonderfully gritty, tangled novel that drags the reader deep into the undertow of a dreadful crime. Beautifully crafted and reminiscent of a dark fairytale.' Chris Womersley
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rash's moody, potent slice of Southern gothic fiction centers on a murder and its devastating effect on a small Appalachian town in the 1950s. When Holland Winchester, local troublemaker in tiny Seneca, S.C., vanishes without a trace, it's up to town sheriff and WWII veteran Will Alexander to search for answers. Holland's mother claims to have heard a gunshot, and she insists that neighbor Billy Holcombe killed her son. Events unfurl slowly and methodically, and it's soon revealed that Billy's pregnant wife, Amy, had been having an affair with Holland. Shifting from Sheriff Alexander's narration, the story continues in Amy's voice as she recounts her frustration with Billy's sterility and her increasingly desperate need to bear a child. An impulsive visit to a spell-weaving widow for advice proves to be Amy's downfall when she's told that if her husband can't give her a child, she should "lay down with a man who can." The ensuing drama of infidelity, jealousy and betrayal is told by a chorus of characters with distinctive Appalachian voices: chief among them are Amy, Billy and Amy's young son, Isaac, whose discovery of the identity of his real father is both heartbreaking and liberating. As the valley is flooded to make room for a power company's land takeover, further tragedies unfold. Poet and short story writer Rash writes lyrically while maintaining the suspense of the central mystery. As each character reveals his or her secrets, the tale builds into a quiet storm and a terrific first novel.
