Wiley Cash

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash is a highly recommended character driven murder mystery set in 1984.

In the middle of the night Sheriff Winston Barnes and his wife Marie are awaken by the sound of a low-flying plane and immediately know something is amiss. Nothing should be landing at the small airport on Oak Island, N.C., so Winston heads over to investigate. What he finds is a large plane has crash landed, the cargo hold is empty, and there is the dead body of a local man on the grass show more near the landing strip. The dead man, Rodney Bellamy, is the son of a local civil rights activist and math teacher and attended school with Winston's daughter, Colleen. Winston starts the investigation before the FBI steps in and Bradley Frye, the rich-boy developer who is Winston's opponent in the upcoming reelection race in a week, shows up to make his presence known.

To further complicate life, Colleen secretly leaves her husband and comes home to visit her parents. She recently lost their first child at birth and is still grieving. His wife Marie is battling cancer. Frye and his buddies show up flying a confederate flag from their truck to threaten and intimidate Bellamy's widow and Jay, her 14 year-old brother who is staying with her. And rumors are flying around that the plane may have been flown by drug smugglers.

The characters are finely drawn, complex, and realistic in their actions and feelings. The narrative is told through the viewpoints of Winston, Colleen, and Jay. All three are very sympathetic characters who are ordinary people struggling with their own challenging circumstances and have very specific individual thoughts and experiences that closely affect their actions. While the murder investigation involves the plane and who shot Rodney, the real focus is the inner lives and thoughts of these characters. Frye is an anomaly as he is depicted as more of a caricature than a realistic antagonist.

The investigation is almost a side-story to the development of the characters, their inner thoughts, and their interactions with each other and the community. While the plot is compelling, the real pull of this novel is the realistic characters and their personal thoughts and struggles during this particular time period and in their specific circumstances. There is a solution to the mystery, and, although there are holes in the plot, many of the internal struggles of the characters do reach some sort of conclusion. The final denouement is unexpected and shocking.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
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"And the Lord knows that when people don't get what they need they take what they can find..." and if this doesn't lead to heartbreak, I don't know what does. Told from the perspectives of 9-year-old Jess Hall, elderly midwife Adelaide Lyle, and Madison County sheriff Clem Barefield, this compulsively readable novel has indelibly imprinted by brain with rich characters and vivid scenes, but it's my heart that has been touched. *A Land More Kind than Home* is the story of religious fanaticism show more gone wrong (can it go otherwise?) in a community of hard-working and hard-drinking souls who have little hope of anything beyond what they can see over the next mountain ridge. It's the story of the damage to be wrought by need and longing and loneliness. It's also a story of hope. "It's a good thing to see that people can heal after they've been broken, that they can change and become something different from what they were before." I don't know if I buy Wiley Cash's notion that churches can heal just as people can, but I closed the book knowing that I will read whatever this man next publishes. show less

“Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me I shall die. I know not where. Saying: "[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth." - Thomas Wolfe

Christopher and Jesse are brothers. Christopher's nickname is Stump. He is mute. Jesse idolizes his older brother. One dusty summer day, they witness an act, that show more involves, their mother and a shady preacher by the name of Carson Chambliss. This places the boys on a dangerous, potentially deadly path. The only two that might be able to save the boys are a kindly old woman named, Adelaide Lyle and Clem, the local sheriff, but Chambliss is a crafty and sinister opponent.
Set in the rugged hills of North Carolina, this stunning debut novel, flows with a hypnotic, narrative style, that draws the reader, deeply into the lives of these perfectly drawn characters, the good, the flawed and the wicked.
Cash is a master storyteller, evoking a lyrical sense of time and place. Highly recommended. show less

Set in the 1980s, When Ghosts Come Home is a haunting and beautifully written story set in a small North Carolina town as the local sheriff finds a body lying at the side of a runway and a huge plane abandoned at the end of that same runway. This story also examines the relationship between a father and daughter as she comes home to recover after her baby was born dead and it touches on black/white relationships as well.

The sheriff is in the middle of an election and his opponent, a younger, show more privileged man is ahead in the polls. This young man seems to want the power of the position more that anything. The sheriff is concerned with how this young man will abuse his power, particularly in regards to the black community.

The author weaves a spellbinding story that unfolds from different points of view including that of the sheriff and his daughter, Colleen as well as a young black boy, brother-in-law to the murdered man. When Ghosts Come Home is a well written, gripping murder mystery that will linger on in my mind. This is the third book by this author that I have read and each one was a gem. show less