Nightwoods by Charles Frazier
Sceptre $39.99
When your début (Cold Mountain, 1997) wins the National Book Award and is made into an Oscar-winning film, and your second novel (Thirteen Moons, 2006) receives similar eulogies, a touch of performance anxiety might be expected. But Charles Frazier's third novel is as accomplished as his first two, while casting a knowing glance towards the big screen.
The location and premise are immediately compelling. It is a decade or two after the end of World War II. A young woman, Luce, lives alone as caretaker of an old lodge in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. Her family background is broken - an alcoholic mother who abandoned her two daughters; a father caught up in his devastating memories of the war. Luce's content, if lonely, routine implodes when her sister Lily is murdered by her second husband, Bud.
Lily's young twins from her previous widowed marriage move in with Luce, mute as a result of the trauma. But unknown to Luce, Bud has escaped conviction due to the skills of a wily lawyer, and is intent on hunting down the stash of robbed cash Lily hid before he killed her.
The only souls who may know the whereabouts of the money are the twins. Simultaneously (and conveniently for the inevitable film), the eligible grandson of the deceased caretaker of the lodge, Stubblefield, is heading to look over his new inheritance.