When teenagers Kenneth and Corrie Tyler venture to their father's graveside they make a horrific discovery: their father is not buried in the casket they bought for him. The undertaker, Fenton Breece, has been grotesquely manipulating the dead. Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler faces a desperate pursuit through eerie backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, lost families and witches, and the most compelling Southern Gothic novel of the year.

William Gay lives in Hohenwald, Tennessee. He is the author of the novels Provinces of Night and The Long Home and the story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.