Show Me Good Land

From this portrait of a hard-scrabble rural community struggling with poverty and decay after decades of initial wealth and prosperity emerges four main characters: Odie Hollander in jail on domestic violence and drug charge; his cousin, manager of the gas station; Rhetta Ballou, returning after twenty years away; and Miles Compton, twenty-one, and gay. Loosely linked through one particular murder, none of the characters is fully good or bad, and the reader must decide where their personal moral lines exist.