Barnes County - Paperback

In the heart of meth-ravaged rural Missouri, justice is personal-and nothing stays buried.

Barnes County is a place of cracked roads, hollowed-out towns, and people doing what they must to survive. When beloved sheriff's deputy Terry Stegman is gunned down during a violent meth-fueled spree, the county's fragile order threatens to collapse.

For Sam Summers, a city-born deputy, her death ignites an obsessive search for the truth behind the killings. Sheriff Bill Wallis, hardened by decades of service and unraveling from the slow decay of his marriage and family, struggles to hold the line. Terry's loyal friend and ranch hand, Franklin Redbird, tumbles into alcohol and rage. And the sheriff's estranged son Logan, an outsider in his own hometown, spirals toward vengeance when a new love is pulled into the county's criminal undercurrent.

As a new meth cook rises through the ranks with bloody ambition, the paths of these damaged souls collide across abandoned farmsteads and backcountry roads-where violence simmers just beneath the surface.

Gritty and lyrical, this rural noir evokes the raw tension of Winter's Bone and the haunted introspection of Faulkner and McCarthy, while carving its own place in the tradition of American literary crime fiction. A searing meditation on loss, loyalty, and the scars of a place too long forgotten.