Drifting South

October 20, 2008
A teen imprisoned in 1959 for crimes he didn't commit finds bittersweet justice more than 20 years later in Davis's second Southern gothic (after Angel's Rest
). Benjamin Purdue grew up the son of a prostitute in Shady Hollow, a remote Blue Ridge Mountains outlaw settlement. He had hope in the form of Amanda Lynn Jennings, a pretty girl with a dangerous secret, but that, like everything else, withers after he shoots a man in self-defense and gets sent to prison for it. In 1980, when Ben gets out of prison, he heads home and discovers the town he remembers has been replaced by a ritzy housing development. Only the cemetery remains with tombstones noting his family members' deaths. Craving answers and longing to find Amanda, he embarks on a harrowing journey of self-discovery. Davis's depiction of Ben's quest to recoup the life stolen from him is enhanced by a gritty first-person narration that's hypnotic and haunting as Ben learns “you can't fence sunshine.”