Author Description

There is nothing holy in Harlis Hocker's life, nothing graceful or sacred. There's only the brutal squalor; the roaches and the dirt and the hate that drive him to be free of it all.There is nothing enviable in Otis Hazelrigg's life, nothing astonishing or whimsical. There are only the caustic memories; the fear and the loneliness and the desperation that push him to escape everything.These two cousins, bound together by the chains of poverty, happen upon something one hot summer morning that neither man finds himself willing to surrender to the other.Harlis sees in this new-found thing a way to break the bonds of his poverty. He can use it to free himself from a life that grinds him under its heel, even if he has to put his own boot to Otis to keep it.If Otis defies his cousin, though, he stands to gain more than an end to his loneliness. If he can fight through the fear and the pain, he might very well regain the pieces of himself he lost so long ago to that final misplaced thundering gunshot.The thing they happen upon that summer morning is, after all, the body of a murdered child.