Synopsis
DEVILWOOD opens in 1994, where Wilbur Miller, a veteran cop, has been assigned to the gentler beat of the Alabama Agricultural and Rural Crimes Unit. What begins with him looking for a missing calf amidst rumours of a “painter” (the American word for panther) at large, finds him stumbling upon what seems to be a gruesome crime scene. A bare, mangled foot, covered in blood leads him to discover more blood, everywhere - on the walls, the floor, as far as the eye can see. He is drawn back to events decades prior when several families built an evangelical church under the guidance of a charismatic itinerant preacher, a period of time Miller has been compellingly trying to forget . . .
Beautifully told, DEVILWOOD unfolds with growing menace. Franklin is able to conjure the dark and mysterious forces that shape and sometimes violate our lives—which some may call evil—while also being acutely sensitive to the various ways in which people seek grace and, if they’re truly fortunate, occasionally find it.
Details
Reviews
“What a gift to have a new Tom Franklin novel, and Devilwood would have been worth any wait. A fleet and sinister tale of an earnest lawman, busted marriages, charismatic pastors, wayward believers and the dark mysteries of the old woods, Devilwood offers up a world where everyone is haunted by the past, and the past’s past. An unholy collision between Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King, it’s utterly enthralling”Megan Abbott, author of You Will know Me
“Devilwood by Tom Franklin is a haunting, stunningly poetic journey into the darkness at the edge of town that hides monsters both corporeal and metaphorical. A tour de force examination of myth and legend and the places we call home”S.A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of King of Ashes
