With his customary verve and insight, Terry Roberts's latest novel is an evocative portrait of humankind's capacity for courage, love, and hope as well as folly, and another love ballad to his region of North Carolina.
Clinton Salter is the sheriff who never wanted to be sheriff. A World War II veteran and widower, he is elected due to the political machinations of his brother. His new territory is the fabled Madison County, North Carolina-a place of the steepest mountain ridges and most isolated coves and valleys. A place where the seasons matter more than the calendar and the past is as real as the present.
When he first takes office, he hopes only to deal with the drunk and disorderly and stolen tractors, but matters quickly accelerate into arson, grave robbing, and murder, and he begins to suspect his own brother's motives. He finds solace in the friendship of Catherine Metcalf, a lonely high school principal whose husband has been in a coma and dying for years. Their only refuge is Clinton's farm high in the mountains, where they can retreat from the world. As they seek to create a new life for themselves and the county, political violence and family cruelty threaten to shatter their visions.
"Time unfolds according to its own rhythms in this historical audiobook, capably narrated by Robert Fass. Despite having been elected to law enforcement mostly against his better judgment, widower, farmer, and reluctant sheriff Clinton Salter is determined to do a good job of it. As he negotiates crimes that range from public drunkenness and tractor theft to arson and possible murder, Salter finds his wounded heart awakening to the possibilities of love. Fass embodies the pastoral nature of this story, which is set in 1960s North Carolina amid the rugged terrain of the mountains and the quixotic people who inhabit them. Steady and unhurried, Fass's narration keeps listeners grounded in the novel's time and place. N.M. � AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine"
