Russell Gilwee

Shady Creek Russell Gilwee

A elegiac coming-of-age tale wrapped in a dark and atmospheric small town murder mystery.

Ten-year old Delbert and his troubled mother, Lillian, return to the small factory town of Shady Creek tucked in the rugged foothills of the Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina following the death of Delbert's maternal grandmother.

Shortly thereafter, Delbert meets his father, Freddy, for the first time after his father is released from state prison and confronts the unfolding truth behind what really happened in the days just before he was born.

With dark secrets festering beneath the surface like an old wound that promises to never heal, Delbert's new life in the small town is quickly and tragically complicated by his father's release, the town's long memory, and the subsequent murder of a young local girl on a cold autumn night -- the teenage daughter of the only witness to testify against Delbert's father a decade earlier.

But as the days become increasingly shorter and the nights longer, Delbert comes to the gradual realization not all is what it seems and that only he holds the keys to his father's absolution.

A backwoods-noir blend of Daniel Woodrell and Cormac McCarthy, Shady Creek is suspense cooked at a slow-burn. A novel that leaves the reader shaken and renewed.