THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK

Here is a debut to leave readers breathless.

This harrowing debut novel opens when Dominick Sawyer camps out with his son and daughter in the woods surrounding their Pennsylvania home. Late in that cold night, he watches from the trees as dark-suited men search his house room by room. In the morning, when the men have gone, the three Sawyers find the words “Wasp,” “Neck” and “Broken” written in salt on their dining room table.

Haunted and damaged by his combat experiences in the Middle East, Dominick believes he is on the verge of losing his home, his children and everything else. And so he loads ample supplies, his guns, his difficult son and his trusting daughter into their jeep. And together they run. THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK is about a father's heroism and stunning failures—and about his need for atonement. It is about a son and daughter's awe for a man whose hands commute back and forth between their shoulders, impatient with the bounds between his life and another's. And THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK is about two children's need to hold someone to account for the violence of their lives.