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About the Book

About the Book

The Cold Way Home

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Julia Keller welcomes readers back to West Virginia, where her lyrical and moving stories of the people of her native state have unfolded since A KILLING IN THE HILLS, the acclaimed first novel in the series.

Deep in the woods just outside Acker's Gap, West Virginia, rises a ragged chunk of what was once a high stone wall. This is all that remains of Wellwood, a psychiatric hospital for the poor that burned to the ground decades ago. And it is here that Bell Elkins –-- prosecutor turned private investigator --- makes a grim discovery while searching for a missing teenager: A dead body, marred by a ghastly wound that can only mean murder.

To solve the mystery of what happened in these woods where she played as a child, Bell and her partners --- former sheriff Nick Fogelsong and former deputy Jake Oakes --- must confront the tangled history of Wellwood and its dark legacy, while each grapples with a private torment. Based on a true chapter in the troubled history of early treatment for psychiatric illness, THE COLD WAY HOME is a story of death and life, of despair and hope, of crime and --- sometimes, but not always --- punishment.

The Cold Way Home
by Julia Keller

  • Publication Date: August 20, 2019
  • Genres: Fiction, Mystery
  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Minotaur Books
  • ISBN-10: 125019122X
  • ISBN-13: 9781250191229