Women are holy

The people of Weyburn, Ohio, practice a religion thousands of years old--the first religion. And the first law of this religion is that no one may harm a woman.

One of them has broken this law. He is a rapist and killer, and he must be found and punished. Only his mother can decide what that punishment will be because only mothers have the right to pass judgment on their children. This is the second law: Life is not a right. Life is a privilege.

Young Scott is witness to all of this. Twelve years old, he is a boy on the cusp of adolescence, full of questions and uncertainty. Is he in some way like Will, the killer? Does Scott belong in the village of Weyburn, or is he, too, an outsider?

As the community searches for the murderer, Scott searches for answers to troubling questions.

His answers will come from the last person he would ever expect.

"The best short novel I have read in the past ten years."

--Donald Sidney-Fryer, author of Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit and Songs and Sonnets Atlantean

"Renowned genre novelist David C. Smith blazes fresh, new territory with a chilling roller coaster ride of a story that will have you gripping white-knuckled at the safety bar from start to finish. Guaranteed to satisfy the appetites of connoisseurs of horror and literary fiction alike."

--Keith Huff, author of Mud People and A Steady Rain