November Mourns Book

Two years ago Shad Jenkins went to prison for assaulting his sister’s attacker. Now he has returned to the southern mountain town of Moon Run Hollow, only to find that Megan is dead. No one knows how she died–or why she was found on Gospel Trail Road, a dirt path leading up to the gorge high above the Chatalaha River, where victims of yellow fever were once brought to die.

Navigating a world filled with abnormal children and clandestine snake handlers, one that is slowly being poisoned by illegal moonshine, Shad must pierce the townsfolk’s superstitions and terrible secrets to find out the truth about his sister’s death. But the Blood Dreams he’s suffered from since childhood have taken on an eerie urgency, revealing to Shad the nightmarish form of an unseen adversary. Plagued by the wraiths that haunt the hollow, Shad finds himself increasingly unsure of his own sanity as he begins to piece together what may have happened to his sister–and who exactly his enemy is....

Publishers Weekly

The investigation of a young girl's apparent murder takes a sharp turn into Twilight Zone territory in Piccirilli's moody follow-up to A Choir of Ill Children (a Stoker finalist). Shad Jenkins is serving out the final days of his two-year prison sentence when he's briefly visited by the ghost of his beloved little sister, Megan, who has just been found dead on a mountain road outside Moon Run Hollow, without a mark on her body. He returns home bent on bringing those responsible to justice, but all potential suspects have solid alibis. Ignoring warnings about the legendary miseries that haunt the mountains where Megan died, Shad takes to the hills to look for clues. His adventures among Tobacco Road moonshiners, snake-handling cultists, interbred grotesques and Bible-thumping fanatics interconnect for a sustained and unnerving evocation of the dark side of Appalachia. Piccirilli successfully blends character and incidents to conjure a spirit of the strange that plays a key role in the tale's surprising but fitting finale. In lieu of a tidy conclusion, this loose and episodic horror novel tantalizes with hints of awesome mysteries that defy complete understanding. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.