THE RAIN BARREL
(William Morrow, Spring 2012)
by Wiley Cash
Religion is supposed to shield children from the evil of the world, but one Sunday nine-year-old Jess Hall watches in horror as his autistic brother is smothered during a healing service in the mountains of North Carolina. Clem Barefield, the local sheriff, arrives to find a group of charismatic believers who, after moving the boy’s body, are unwilling to say one word about his death. At the center of the mystery is Carson Chambliss, a snake-handling ex-convict turned preacher, whose past is just as mysterious as the power he claims to possess.
The first person Sheriff Barefield turns to is Adelaide Lyle, the church matriarch, a woman whose good sense brand of religion straddles the divide between blind faith and cold fact. Her understanding of the mountain community and its people makes her prediction of a violent reckoning just as believable as it is unavoidable. Jess is the lynchpin for this violence, and he struggles to navigate an adult world where the truth is something you hide from children.
THE RAIN BARREL is a literary thriller, thick with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, and a sense of hope that is both tragic and unforgettable.
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