In the Fullness of Time

With his customary verve and insight, Terry Roberts' latest novel is an evocative portrait of humankind's capacity for courage, love, and hope as well as folly, and another love ballad to his region of North Carolina.

Clinton Salter is the sheriff who never wanted to be sheriff. A World War II veteran and widower, he is elected due to the political machinations of his brother. His new territory is the fabled Madison County, North Carolina--a place of the steepest mountain ridges and most isolated coves and valleys. A place where the seasons matter more than the calendar and the past is as real as the present.

When he first takes office, he hopes only to deal with the drunk and disorderly and stolen tractors, but matters quickly accelerate into arson, grave robbing, and murder, and he begins to suspect his own brother's motives. He finds solace in the friendship of Catherine Metcalf, a lonely high school principal whose husband has been in a coma and dying for years. Their only refuge is Clinton's farm high in the mountains, where they can retreat from the world. As they seek to create a new life for themselves and the county, political violence and family cruelty threaten to shatter their visions.

Terry Roberts is the author of five celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (Finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black (Finalist for the 2022 Best Paperback Original Novel by the International Thriller Writers Organization); The Sky Club; and most recently, The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, releasing in October 2024.

Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina--born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain story telling.

Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.