Shady Creek, Paperback

Contributor(s):

• Author: Russell Gilwee

In the backwoods-noir tradition of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone meets Stephen King's The Body (Stand by Me) comes a powerful debut novel. Deftly blurring the line between literary and genre fiction, Shady Creek is an evocative coming of age tale wrapped in a dark, atmospheric small town murder mystery.

Ten year old Delbert and his troubled mother, Lillian, return to the small factory town of Shady Creek tucked in the rugged foothills of the Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina following the death of Delbert's maternal grandmother.

Shortly thereafter, Delbert meets his father for the first time after his father is released from prison and discovers the unfolding truth behind what really happened in the days just before he was born.

With dark secrets festering beneath the surface like an old wound that promises to never heal, Delbert's new life in the small town is quickly and tragically complicated by his father's release, the town's long memory, and the subsequent murder of a young local girl on a cold autumn night -- the teenage daughter of the only witness to testify against Delbert's father a decade earlier.

But as the days become increasingly shorter and the nights longer, Delbert comes to the gradual realization not all is what it seems and that only he holds the keys to his father's absolution.

Shady Creek is suspense cooked at a slow-burn -- one that leaves us shaken and renewed.