Winner of the 2016 Alex Award
Best Book of 2015 Kansas City Star
In this intricate novel of psychological suspense, a fatal discovery near the high school ignites a witch-hunt in a Southeast Texas refinery town, unearthing communal and family secrets that threaten the lives of the towns girls.
In Port Sabine, the air is thick with oil, superstition reigns, and dreams hang on making a winning play. All eyes are on Mercy Louis, the star of the championship girls basketball team. Mercy seems destined for greatness, but the road out of town is riddled with obstacles. There is her grandmother, Evelia, a strict evangelical who has visions of an imminent Rapture and sees herself as the keeper of Mercys virtue. There are the cryptic letters from Charmaine, the mother who abandoned Mercy at birth. And then theres Travis, the boy who shakes the foundation of her faith.
At the periphery of Mercys world floats team manager Illa Stark, a lonely wallflower whose days are spent caring for a depressed mother crippled in a refinery accident. Like the rest of the town, Illa is spellbound by Mercys beauty and talent, but a note discovered in Mercys gym locker reveals that her life may not be as p...