This was a fascinating book about tradition and Southern folklore. Middle-aged academic Rachel Ruskin learned that her older brother died by suicide, she is denied tenure, and then her parents are killed in a car accident. She has to return to her family home in small-town North Carolina from New York City to deal with the family tobacco farm. As a child, a friend was accidentally killed by a gun and she and her brother kept a terrible secret about the event. This powerful novel really lays heavy on the death by guns to get to Rachel’s real story of family loss, secrets and generational violence.