From Edgar Award winning-author James McLaughlin, a mesmerizing literary thriller set in Virginian Appalachia, about the caretaker of a forest preserve and the poacher who calls in a desperate debt

Rice Moore thought he was done with trouble. After finally shaking the Mexican cartel that long hunted him and successfully shutting down a bear poaching scheme, Rice is ready to settle into his role as caretaker of the Turk Mountain Preserve. He is closer than ever with his best friend, Sara, the preserve’s biologist, and has started seeing the receptionist at the local sheriff’s office. So when his former enemy, ex-Marine bear poacher Alan Mirra, calls in an old debt, Rice agrees to help him hide out in the preserve. Rice and Mirra settle into a rhythm and maybe even a kind of combative friendship, bonded by grudging mutual respect and their love of the wild.

But Rice soon learns that he is harboring a fugitive: Mirra gunned down a federal agent and is on the run. What’s more, the connection Rice has always felt for the forest has been deepening into something all-consuming. He is haunted by visions of a burning world and a towering ghost bear. Mirra is having the same visions, visions that push both men to the edge of sanity and erode their precarious trust. Sara can tell Rice is keeping a dangerous secret, one that threatens all of them. Can Rice keep his promise to Mirra while protecting the place and people he most loves? And does Mirra have one more surprise up his sleeve?