Deep in the heart of western North Carolina lies Marshall, a quiet mountain town where people believe in protecting their own—especially if they harbor secrets. For the town's modest folk, that's the way it's always been—a belief instilled in them for generations. For a curious boy like Jess Hall, it means trouble, especially when his older brother, Christopher, a mute autistic boy everyone calls Stump, can't help sneaking a look at something he isn't supposed to—an act that causes catastrophic repercussions and thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's unprepared.

Confronted with a stunned community, a family in pain, and witnesses who will not talk, Sheriff Clem Barefield turns to church matriarch Adelaide Lyle, whose role as the town's moral center makes her predictions of a violent reckoning to come all but unavoidable. As the lynchpin for this violence, Jess is set adrift in a world in which the truth is hidden from children, even if they know things adults do not.

A Land More Kind Than Home is a literary thriller packed with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, addiction, and a sense of hope that is as tragic as it is unforgettable.