Police Chief Ray "Big Ray" Elmore has spent twenty years keeping the peace in Split Tree, Arkansas, a town too small to hide its secrets—until the night that a farmhouse burns to the ground, leaving behind two bodies and more questions than answers. It could be nothing more than an accident except that half the county swears they've seen the dead couple's son, walking the streets of town—flesh and blood, scarred and changed, but very much alive.
There's just one problem. He’s been dead for over twenty years, buried somewhere in the sand of a Pacific island that Big Ray remembers all too well.
As Ray digs through fifty years of buried secrets—stretching from a convict's escape off a prison work gang to a decades-old death written off as an accident—every thread seems to loop back to the one man in Locust County he despises most. But connecting the dots may cost him more than he’s willing to pay. With a federal investigation bearing down, an old flame in danger, and the weight of every man he saw die in the war visiting him at night, Ray must decide how far he's willing to go to get justice for two people nobody else thought worth avenging.
Some ghosts need to stay buried.
Genre: Mystery
There's just one problem. He’s been dead for over twenty years, buried somewhere in the sand of a Pacific island that Big Ray remembers all too well.
As Ray digs through fifty years of buried secrets—stretching from a convict's escape off a prison work gang to a decades-old death written off as an accident—every thread seems to loop back to the one man in Locust County he despises most. But connecting the dots may cost him more than he’s willing to pay. With a federal investigation bearing down, an old flame in danger, and the weight of every man he saw die in the war visiting him at night, Ray must decide how far he's willing to go to get justice for two people nobody else thought worth avenging.
Some ghosts need to stay buried.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Thomas Holland's Prodigal Ghost