He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to 'your people' carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition.Īfter fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. NB: This is the first book in the Joe Talbert Series and the first book in the Max Rupert and Joe Talbert Series. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout? But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.Īs Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject.

His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. Racing after the most dangerous kind of criminal-a desperate father-and with the ghosts of their own pasts never far behind, Max and Lyle go on the hunt within a treacherous landscape, determined to bring an evil man to justice, and to bring a terrified child home alive.Ĭollege student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. But the closer Max and Lyle get to finding proof, the more slippery Reed becomes, until he makes a break for the beautiful but formidable Boundary Waters wilderness with vulnerable Pip in tow. When Max reluctantly looks into their disappearance, he too becomes convinced something has gone very wrong. Lyle’s certain Sandy's ex-husband Reed is behind it, but the new sheriff is refusing to investigate. But then the former local sheriff, Lyle Voight, arrives with a desperate plea: Lyle’s daughter Sandy and his six-year-old grandson Pip have disappeared. Mourning the tragic death of his wife, he's also racked by guilt-he alone knows what happened to her killer. Max Rupert has left his position as a Minneapolis homicide detective to live in solitude.

Book the life we bury by allen eskens