The Hollar.

In the mountains of 1970s Appalachia, a family can know every bend in the road and still be unable to find its way out of its own history.

Life in the hollars is shaped by work, weather, kinship, and the practical knowledge passed from one generation to another. People know how to mend what breaks, how to make a little last, and how to recognize trouble long before it reaches the front porch.

They also know when not to speak.

For a child, the world begins with the people who feed her, shelter her, instruct her, and tell her what is right. Their love is the first thing she learns to trust. Their authority is harder to question.

The mountains are beautiful. The people who inhabit them are capable of great tenderness, fierce humor, and extraordinary endurance.

But even in a place where everyone knows everyone, there are things a child must learn to see for herself.

The Hollar is a Southern psychological novel of family, faith, childhood, and the unsettling distance between being protected and being kept.