The Gods of Green County: A Novel

Coralee Harper struggles for justice for her dead brother and her own sanity in Depression-era rural Arkansas.

In 1926 in rural Green County, Arkansas, where cotton and poverty reign, young Coralee Harper hopes for a family and a place in her community, but when her brother Buddy is killed by a powerful sheriff, she cant recover from his death or the injustice of his loss. When she begins to spot her dead brother around town, she wondersis she clairvoyant, mistaken, or is she losing her mind?

What Coralee cant fathom is that there are forces at work that threaten her and the very fabric of the town: Leroy Harrison, a newly minted, ambitious lawyer who makes a horrible mistake, landing him a judgeship and a guilty conscience for life; an evangelical preacher and his flock of snake-handling parishioners; the women of the town who, along with Coralees own mother, make up their own kind of jury for Coralees behavior; Sheriff Wiley Slocum who rules the entire field, harboring dark secrets of his own; and finally, Coralees husband Earl, who tries to balance his work at the cotton gin with his fight for family and Coralees life.

When Coralee ends up in a sanity hearing before Judge Leroy Harrison, the judge must decide both Coralees fate and his own. The chain of events following his decision draws him more deeply into the sheriffs far-reaching sphere of influence, and reveals the destructive nature of power, evenand especiallyhis own.