From the author of Gap Creek—an international bestseller and winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award—comes the gripping story of two brothers struggling against each other and the confines of their mountain world in 1920s Appalachia.



The Powell brothers—Muir and Moody—are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams. Moody, the older and wilder brother—embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's place in the family—takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes by wandering, making his way around the country in attempts to find something—an occupation, a calling—to match his ambition.



Through it all, their mother, Ginny, tries to steer her boys right, all the while remembering her own losses: her husband (whose touch still haunts her), her youth, and the fiery sense of God that once ordered her world. When Muir, in a drunken vision, decides that his purpose in life is to clear a space on a hill and build a stone church with his own hands, the consequences of his plan are far-reaching and irrevocable: a community threatens to tear itself apart, men die, and his family is forever changed. All that's left in the aftermath are the ghosts and the memories of a new man.