In arresting, haunting voices, Ann Hite weaves together the narratives of five Southern women whose lives are inextricably bound together when a brutal murder takes place in a rural South Carolina town in the 1930s.

Once a person leaves the mountain, they never come back, not really. They're lost forever.

Nellie Pritchard has married a man without realizing he was a walking ghost story. When she moves to Black Mountain in South Carolina with her husband, Hobbs, the townsfolk keep telling Nellie to get off the mountain while she still can?to go home before it's too late. They say the mountain is haunted, and it doesn't take long for Nellie to feel it, too...

Told in the stunning voices of five women whose lives are inextricably bound when a murder takes place in rural Depression-era North Carolina, Ann Hite's unforgettable debut spans generations and conjures the best of Southern folk-lore?mystery, spirits, hoodoo, and the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian landscape.