A Peck of Dirt Before We Die: An Appalachian Zackie Story Supernatural Suspense Book 1

Some folks bury their sins. Some women dig for answers. Up in the back hollers of 1970 Appalachia, 81-year-old Lummie Sinclair minds her own business and tends to the dead in the old way. She's a sin-eater by blood and by habit, and folks give her a wide berth on account of it. That suits her fine. She lives alone in her cabin with an old woodstove, a sharp tongue, and an immortal red hound who knows the roads between this world and the next. When Earl Eskew, a rich mine owner with more money than sense, sends for Lummie to clear a violent haunting from his house, she knows trouble's fixing to follow. Spirits don't turn mean without cause, and men like Earl don't go asking favors unless they're scared clean through. With young Cam Ramsay-distant kin with the Sight and more nerve than is strictly wise-Lummie sets to work. What she finds isn't just a restless spirit, but a mess of buried wrongs: dead miners, a child left to freeze, and a whole town willing to look the other way so long as the money keeps flowing. To set things right, Lummie must outwit these men who think the mountain, the law, and the truth all belong to them. But when Earl's inflated pride is pricked after she bests him, his revenge is nasty and personal. By Lummie's reckoning, she's done being neighborly.