Branches

From the author of A Slight Trick of the Mind: A "hybrid of Stephen King and Jim Thompson" that follows the thoughts of a troubled Texas lawman (Booklist).

Branches is a novel at once cautionary and starkly provocative, set in the "gnarled hide of West Texas" near the end of the 20th century. Sheriff Branches finds himself returning to his childhood home, revisiting his bleak childhood while contemplating a series of mysterious dog poisonings in his small community. In discovering the painful truth behind the crimes, he must also delve into his own violent past. As both a boy and a man, Branches embodies the very arbitrary nature of Justice; he roams through a grim landscape where nothing is as it appears, taking the reader headlong toward an unsettling, horrific resolution.