True Believers

Alabama, June 1956. Silas Mercer deals in facts. As Blackwell's undertaker and county coroner, he writes down what the dead tell him, and he has never signed his name to a lie.

Then the Reverend Eli Thibault's revival rolls down Highway 98 in a cloud of red dust, promising a miracle to every sick and desperate soul in the county. Silas knows a show when he sees one. So does eleven-year-old Toby Boyd, who drags a steel brace through the straw while his mother beats a tambourine until her hands bleed.

On opening night a barefoot child walks in off the highway and down the aisle. The preacher lays a hand on him, and the fake miracle turns horribly real. The tent freezes in the summer heat. A town councilman drops dead. And something long and dark follows the child back out into the night.

By morning the sheriff has a lie to tell and a man to pin it on: Silas's oldest friend, a shell-shocked veteran who never hurt a soul. All Silas has is a weather ledger, a broken brace, and a body that says what really happened.

True Believers is the first book in the Blackwell Revival Trilogy, a Southern Gothic tale of faith, fraud, and the thing that answers when the wrong man calls.