Crone: A Novel

Eli Lamp is a broken man. An ex-detective, ex-addict, and long-grieving father whose daughter, Hannah, disappeared a decade before, Eli decimated his old life investigating her abduction and is now indebted to the Crooked Wheel, a local drug gang, as an enforcer. He lives in a rundown trailer at the edge of the woods, where he keeps Hannah’s room in pristine condition and tries to make it through one day at a time. But when the son of the Crooked Wheel’s boss is found viciously murdered in a crime scene that doesn’t seem to add up, Eli receives a new order: Find out who the killer is and your debt to the Crooked Wheel is clear forever. You’re free. This pursuit brings him into the orbit of Avery Bryant, Hannah’s best friend and the last person to see her before she went missing. Soon, Eli and Avery are entwined in a hunt for answers that spans decades, stretches the realm of possibility, and brings churning to the surface a conspiracy linking not only these current tragedies but the buried sorrows of Eli’s past. And though none of them dare say the word witch, at least not out loud, something lurks in the woods, bent-backed and black-eyed, clawed and vengeful, looming ever closer. . . .