High summer in Ackers Gap West Virginia--but no ones enjoying the rugged natural landscape Not while a killer stalks the small town and its hard-luck inhabitants County prosecutor Bell Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong are stymied by a murderer who seems to come and go like smoke on the mountain At the same time Bell must deal with the return from prison of her sister Shirley--who like Bell carries the indelible scars of a savage pastIn Summer of the Dead the third Julia Keller mystery chronicling the journey of Bell Elkins and her return to her Appalachian hometown we also meet Lindy Crabtree--a coal miners daughter with dark secrets of her own secrets that threaten to explode into even more violenceAckers Gap is a place of loveliness and brutality of isolation and fierce attachments--a place where the dead rub shoulders with the living and demand their due.
