Divining Rod

From "the lineage of . . . Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty" comes a prize-winning novel about crimes of passion in Alabama ( San Francisco Chronicle). After the deaths of his parents, Simon Bell returns to his sleepy hometown of Sherwood, Alabama, hoping for a simple, quiet existence. But when he meets Delia Holladay one hot, unmoving summer day, latent needs and desires are suddenly awakened. Delia is young, beautiful, impulsive, and married. As their emotions deepen, the affair soon slips beyond their control, building to a final reckoning that will leave no one untouched. Evoking a medley of distinct voices, Michael Knight, "a writer of the first rank", and winner of the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Excellence in Fiction, tells a richly layered tale of adultery, love, and murder ( Esquire). "Every word in this deeply resonant novel is pure gold" as it follows the arc of one fateful romance to its inevitable and heartbreaking conclusion ( The Washington Post Book World).