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Zusatztext "[A] well-crafted! dramatic tale of murder! miracles and midlife romance..... Lane utilizes exotic religions to intensify the book’s dark-toned suspense! while resisting oversimplification and insult. Her heroine’s open-minded fascination with beliefs not her own should appeal to an unusually wide readership."--Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Vicki Lane Klappentext Elizabeth Goodweather and her husband built a rewarding life in the hills and hollows of their adopted Appalachian home. But now Elizabeth is alone, her husband tragically killed, her children grown, the land around her filled with customs and beliefs she cannot share. It's still a good life-tending the small herb and flower business-but Elizabeth's fragile peace is about to be shattered. Cletus Gentry vanished while hunting ginseng in the hills-and his mother is sure the childlike man was murdered. As Elizabeth retraces Cletus's last wanderings, she will discover that a killer has been waiting all the while in the coves and hollows near her farm for her to see the light...and then come willingly to her own death.CHAPTER 1 You Just Got to Have Faith (Monday) When Dessie Miller lay dying at home, her family overflowed the little house in a bittersweet reunion. Food was on the table at all hours of the day and of the night, continually replenished as newcomers arrived with their contributions. "This here's the tater salad that Mommy always loved" accompanied an aluminum dishpan heaped with a pale yellow mound of potatoes, chopped pickles, and hard-boiled eggs, all glistening with mayonnaise. A gaunt chain-smoking woman, just off her factory shift, set down a cardboard tub of fried chicken with a dismissive wave of her cigarette: "It ain't but Colonel Sanders but I reckon someone kin worry it down." A grizzled farmer in clean overalls handed a covered bowl to one of the daughters. "Them greasy cut-short beans is some Ollie canned; she cain't come 'cause she's down in the back, but she cooked 'em up fer you 'uns." The Ridley Branch Freewill Baptist choir sang "O Come, Angel Band" in the living room and two teenage grandchildren got saved in the kitchen. Elizabeth Goodweather sat quietly at one end of the plastic-upholstered sofa. The heat in the crowded house was stifling but she couldn't step out to the porch, not yet, not while Pastor Briggs was praying aloud for Dessie and for all the "miserable sinners" gathered there. He went on and on in the hypnotic chant that was the way of so many old-time mountain preachers, his voice rising and falling, a loud inhalation at the end of each phrase keeping his message from ever coming to a full stop. The sonorous words rolled out, almost in an auctioneer's chant: "Yes, it's the hour of decision, brothers and sisters, the time when you make your choice . . . you make your choice between the fire below . . . and it's a hot fire . . . and it's an eternal fire . . ." I hate the emphasis on damnation , thought Elizabeth, but I know it's what these folks expect out of a sermon . Across the room she saw Miss Birdie Gentry, one of her longtime neighbor friends. Birdie and her middle-aged son, Cletus, lived in a tiny log house down by the paved road that ran beside Ridley Branch. Cletus was what people called "simple," but he and Miss Birdie took care of each other and scratched out a living from their tobacco patch and garden. Miss Birdie's eyes were fixed on the preacher and her lips were silently moving. ". . . but there's a lifeline . . . and it's a heavenly lifeline . . . and Jesus, he'll pull you out of the pit . . ." Many of those in the little room were swaying and nodding now; some of the women held up their open-palmed hands in an almost ecstatic surrender. "Thank you, Jesus," someone murmured. A few cigarette-hungry men shuffled uneasily by the door, held in place by sharp glances from thei...
