The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years,...

Their family farms devastated by a Minnesota drought in 1987, a father searches for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, while a pastor's wife returns to the town for mysterious reasons of her own.