A Killing in the Hills by Julia Keller

A murder mystery set in my home state—what is not to like!  The only thing I disliked is that the author, another native, made up a county when we have 55 perfectly good ones to choose from!  Everything else I liked.  Everything else is described perfectly.  Extreme poverty, honest pride, small towns where everyone knows someone who knows someone and the hollers (hollows for non-natives) keep more secrets than can be counted. Despair that comes from having the intelligence but not the money or wherewithal to change the direction of one’s fate is evident. 

She weaves a good tale of a child who is pulled from horrible conditions and goes away to become a lawyer. Has a perfect family, married to a man who also “escaped” and has no intention of ever returning.  What got her to return to Acker’s Gap with her daughter is something many questioned as the book progressed.  I am one who left and has no intention of returning. However, I am not a prosecutor who has the opportunity to put drug criminals behind bars and hopefully enable others to use the innate intelligence they possess and pull themselves out of the cycle of despair that has hit so much of the state.  Meth labs abound.  Looking at my hometown newspaper I see evidence of this each week.  More and more are lured into the quick fix and easy money.  Behind each of them is a person like Tom Cox, someone who knows better, can do better and thinks (convinces himself) he is doing it for the right reasons until the greed sets in. 

The secondary story here is Bell’s itself.  She was abused by her father and her sister killed the father and burned the trailer with him in it.  She went to prison and insisted her sister consider her dead.  Bell tried even until the very end but Shirley would not give in.  It is interesting that Nick told her people had known what was going on in the house but did not want to speak up.  That is the nature of such insulated small towns.  Even the Bevins household would allow a mentally challenged young man to take the blame for a death of a young boy rather than admit to an affair.

The novel is tied together nicely when Carla asks her to go back to her high school and talk to the students.  Progress on so many levels!  She leaves the reader with hope that thinks can change. I hope she is correct.