You can never go home again. Whether as caution or lament, the adage meant nothing to Addie Decker because when she left the rural Southwest for college in Los Angeles, she vowed never to return. But when her grandmother’s death calls Addie back, she confronts a landscape both familiar and foreign as a sudden boom in gas development threatens her family’s ranching heritage even as it promises vital prosperity to her old hometown. With her lover in tow, her high school sweetheart in waiting, and a sagebrush militia lurking in the wings, Addie must learn difficult lessons about loyalty and family while navigating a minefield of greed and obstinacy, love and violence.
September 2019 | Fiction | 978-1-948814-12-6 | 200 pp | $17.95
“A spellbinding tale of multigenerational love and conflict.”
—SCOTT GRAHAM, author of the National Park Mystery Series
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. JOSEPH GREAVES spent 25 years as an LA trial lawyer before devoting his talents to fiction. Sometimes writing as Chuck Greaves, he has been a finalist for most of the major awards in crime fiction including the Shamus, Macavity, Lefty, and Audie, as well as the New Mexico-Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado Book Awards. He is the author of five previous novels, most recently Tom & Lucky, a Wall Street Journal “Best Books of 2015” selection and finalist for the 2016 Harper Lee Prize. He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the book critic for the Four Corners Free Press newspaper in southwestern Colorado, where he lives and writes.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
WHAT FALLS AWAY: A Novel
Cassandra Soelberg, pregnant at seventeen, was cast out of her community by religious leaders. Returning to her rural Utah hometown after nearly forty years to care for her senile mother, she meets a young man with an uncanny resemblance to the father of the child she was forced to give up for adoption. Drawn back into traumatic scenes of young adulthood, she must reconcile with her past in the fiercely beautiful landscapes that shaped her. What Falls Away is a stunning novel about family, art, and the raw process of healing.
"A powerful novel that will resonate with anyone who has returned to a place they no longer recognize as home."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
PRAISE FOR CHURCH OF THE GRAVEYARD SAINTS
“The landscape looms large in this contemplative novel . . . with both passion and compassion [Greaves takes] readers on a lyrical, vivid tour of the West.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Greaves’ environmentalist passions echo on every page without interfering with the story, thanks to his convincing characters, breakneck pace, and lyrical depictions of rural life.”
—BOOKLIST
“This modern Western delves into the cold truths about the price of progress, the bonds of family, and the journey of self-discovery.”
—BOULDER LIFESTYLE
"Masterful…The history of the land and the people who populate it are interwoven into the very fabric of a plot that could grace the headlines in current news cycles."
—DURANGO HERALD
“Timely and well-told . . . this compelling tale could have been ripped from the headlines.”
—ANNE HILLERMAN, author of The Tale Teller
“A spellbinding tale of multigenerational love and conflict.”
—SCOTT GRAHAM, author of the National Park Mystery Series
“Take a walk through the Church of the Graveyard Saints, take a walk into one hell of a book with one of my favorite authors, Chuck Greaves.”
—CRAIG JOHNSON
author of the Walt Longmire Series, the basis of the Netflix drama Longmire
"No stranger to the landscape of the modern west, Greaves produces a tightly plotted drama that explores the extremes of preservation and development, and the political theater that can destroy everything in between."
—BEAU L’AMOUR, author (with Louis L'Amour) of No Traveler Returns