With his customary verve and insight, Terry Roberts' latest novelis 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 ina comaand 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 themselvesand the county,political violence and family cruelty threaten to shatter their visions.