Christopher McGinley in conversation with Wes Browne discussing and signing Once These Hills

Wednesday, November 8 at 7pm ET 

Location: Joseph-Beth Lexington

Join us for Christopher McGinley in conversation with Wes Browne discussing and signing Once These Hills. Optional RSVP is below, but not required to attend the event.

It’s 1898. Up on Black Boar Mountain in eastern Kentucky, life is quiet for the small settlement of farmers who work the land around their cabins. But when ten-year old Lydia King unearths an ancient, preserved body on the seep bog, a curse is let loose. At least that’s what some people believe.

They might be right.

Down in the valley, the Railroad uses convict labor to lay track, hell bent on timbering all of the hillside. Problem is, a trio of violent prisoners feel the work ain’t exactly to their liking. Behind their ring leader Burr Hollis, a predatory, sadistic man whose name inspires fear amongst the hardest of criminals, they take to the hills and leave a wake of their own hell up on Black Boar, as wide and deep as any timber cut.

In the years following, Lydia falls in love and marries a mountain boy, someone as skilled and at home in the woods as she. She discovers an intimate part of herself, and experiences both a physical and spiritual awakening that allows her to put the trauma behind her . . . or so she thinks.

When Burr Hollis returns for a reckoning with her, she’ll need all of her huntress skills just to stay alive. But she won’t have much of a chance, unless she can reverse the curse of the bog body.

Chris McGinley lives in Lexington, Kentucky where he writes crime fiction set in the hills of Appalachia and teaches middle school social studies and English. His story "Hellbenders" made the "Other Distinguished Stories of 2018" list in Best American Mystery Stories of 2019. His work has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Mystery Weekly, Tough, Pulp Modern, Switchblade, and on other sites and outlets. Coal Black (Shotgun Honey Books) is his first collection.

Wesley Browne is the author of the novel Hillbilly Hustle. He is founder and host of Pages & Pints Reading Series at Apollo Pizza in Richmond, Kentucky.