The Night the River Wept : A Novel

In a small Georgia town, a young woman struggling in her new marriage seeks answers about the decades-old deaths of three young boys as she yearns to become a mother herself. Essential reading for fans of Southern fiction with a mystery bent from the author of The Floating Girls

Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere, Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always wanted to be. But that's proving more difficult than she thought, and Arlene is desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things and get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.

As the summer gives way to a chilly, lonesome fall up in the mountains of northern Georgia, she takes a part-time job bagging evidence at the local police department, which involves about twenty minutes of actual work, and the rest of her shift she reads over old cold cases. One in particular fascinates her: the mysterious deaths of three young brothers murdered on Deck River, followed by the suicide of Mitchell Wright, the prime suspect in the murders. Arlene becomes obsessed with the case: What kind of monster would do this to these poor little boys—who never got the chance to grow up? With the help of the police department's receptionist and a family friend of the prime suspect who is adamant Mitchell had nothing to do with the murders, Arlene is hellbent on unraveling the case and can't help but feel that if she solves the case of the Broderick boys deaths, she'll find her footing in her young marriage and maybe find what she's been looking for all along.

Content warning: off-page mentions of murder, death of young children, miscarriage, suicide