Rock of Ages
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Littlejohn: A haunting novel that will “appeal to readers of Southern fiction and to genre fans who favor character-driven crime stories” (Booklist).
Littlejohn McCain has been dead eleven years. In that time, his daughter has divorced one husband and buried another. Georgia has reclaimed her original name and believes she is starting to settle comfortably into the last and quietest third of her life. But then she starts seeing her dead father—not just in dreams, but also in her Montclair University classroom.
Her son Justin is already down in Scots County, North Carolina, with his pregnant girlfriend, helping prepare what’s left of Littlejohn’s farm for sale. On the verge of a breakdown, Georgia joins them. As a girl, Georgia couldn’t wait to get away from the farm and her moribund hometown. She’s back now, but only long enough to sell the former and bid a final, less-than-fond farewell to the latter. Or so she thinks.
When her cousin Jenny dies neglected and under mysterious circumstances, Georgia is forced to deal with a major dose of baby-boomer guilt. She’s always told herself that she could live with the knowledge that she would never truly “do right” by her older relatives, but now she’s not so sure. The “peace that passes understanding” about which the members of her father’s old church sing seems far beyond her reach. Georgia, with grandmotherhood and a ghost hovering, tries to discover what really happened to Jenny and partially redeem herself. In the process, she will find two things she never expected in the middle of the dead-calm boredom of East Geddie—requited, taboo-flouting lust and a murder mystery.
From the acclaimed author of Oregon Hill, Rock of Ages is “rich in character and place [and] a haunting odyssey toward redemption and repatriation” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the bleak blue sandhills of North Carolina's "Scots" (read Scotland) County, Owen's atmospheric eighth novel continues the story of Littlejohn McCain's willful prodigal daughter, Georgia, a character from his acclaimed debut, Littlejohn (1992). After the devastating death of her third husband, Georgia McCain, a 51-year-old English professor who teaches in Montclair, N.J., takes sabbatical leave to return to her rural birthplace of East Geddie, N.C. There, 11 years after the death of her father whose ghost still haunts her she and her 27-year-old son, Justin (accompanied by his pregnant young girlfriend), hope to sell Littlejohn's house. But Georgia's homecoming is complicated by the drowning of her elderly cousin, Jenny McLaurin. Suspecting foul play, Georgia questions Jenny's dubious property bequest and provokes the wrath of the redneck whom she is sure stole her cousin's land. Rich in character and place, this murder mystery is also a haunting odyssey toward redemption and repatriation.