From Edgar Award-winning author Henry Wise comes a decisive sequel where word is bond—until the past threatens to break it.

this forceful sequel to Holy City brims with Wiseʻs trademark examination of the pathos and ethos of small-town life, the equal weights of grief and hatred.

As detectives in a missing persons case search for answers, the sum of their investigation illuminates the hard fact that there is a price for progress, and a cost for living by the code. Powerful and complex, the novel observes the gravity of the past, the momentum of sin, and the impossibility of salvation.

'A new master of Southern gothic.' Kirkus Reviews



Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA program. A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. His non-fiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures.