Killing Ground

With The Killing Ground Mary Lee Settle completes her grand design for The Beulah Quintet, an unforgettable generational saga about the roots of American culture, class, and identity and the meaning of freedom. The novel begins in 1978 with the return of Hannah McKarkle to her hometown of Canona, West Virginia, from which she set out nearly two decades before to remove the shroud of mystery surrounding her brother's death. In her attempt to understand his murder, Hannah pieces together a collective history of Canona and peels away the facades that mask its "best people." In addition to revealing the love affairs, hatreds, resentments, and hypocrisies of Canona's ruling class, she becomes acquainted with the community's unpretentious citizenry with whom her fate is equally tied. Hannah's quest reveals a heritage that extends back to Johnny Church of Prisons, bringing the story of The Beulah Quintet full circle and yielding a tale told with moving conviction.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.