Promised Land

"[A] new master of Southern gothic."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Word is bond--until the past threatens to break it

From the Edgar Award-winning author comes a decisive sequel to Holy City in which a missing person case forces deputy sheriff Will Seems to confront the way history anchors, corrupts, and defines the present

Deep within southside Virginia lies the Snakefoot--a wild swampland that holds secrets, hides truths, and harbors the dead in murky waters that refuse to shine yet somehow glow.

One morning, a pickup truck is found jammed into the mud, the driver's door open amidst scattered bullets and bloodstains on the seat. The driver, Rainbo Boon, is nowhere to be found, but his tracks lead Deputy Sheriff Will Seems and his partner, Tania Jameson, into the swamp.

During their investigation, Buck Tomlin, the grandson of the missing Rainbo, proves cooperative, at least at first. But when the boy's whereabouts from the night of the accident don't check out, Will and Tania must confront the troubling reality that the Snakefoot might hold more than just a runaway victim.

When haunting layers of history--both local and personal--rise to the surface of the Snakefoot, the people who have found refuge in its murky waters are exposed. Who really is Rainbo Boon? Where was Buck on the night of the accident? And how does this all connect to the recent efforts to redevelop the land?

As Will and Tania search for answers, so does Buck, and the sum of their investigations illuminates the hard fact that there is a price for progress, and a cost to living by a code. Sometimes all a person has is his word, and that word is his bond.

Powerful and complex, Promised Land is about the gravity of the past, the momentum of sin, and the impossibility of salvation.

Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA Program. His work has appeared in Shenandoah, Nixes Mate, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, and elsewhere. His first novel, Holy City, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel of the Year. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.