Twisted Tree — Kent Meyers

This “beautifully written” novel about a murder in small-town South Dakota explores “a haunted territory of regret, longing and guilt” (Jess Walter).

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the citizens of the windswept prairie town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this tragedy -- the loss, the repercussions, and the secrets they carry -- as one girl's short life unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.
 
Among them are a supermarket clerk hiding the terrors of her past; an ex-priest who remembers a lost love; an abused caretaker exacting a long-awaited revenge; Hayley Jo's best friend, who fed her addiction; and her father, channeling his grief in desperate and unexpected ways. As Hayley Jo's murder recasts and reconnects these left-behind lives, her absence roots itself in the community in astonishingly violent and tender ways.
 
One of the best contemporary writers on the American West, Kent Meyers takes us into the complexity of community regardless of landscape, and offers a tribute to the powerful effect one person's life can have on everyone she knew.
 
“Meyers's small masterpiece deserves comparison to the work of Raymond Carver, Joy Williams, and Peter Matthiessen.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
“Like Russell Banks in The Sweet Hereafter, Kent Meyers spins out his intimate life stories from the hub of a small town tragedy and takes us into places we never thought we'd go.” -- Stewart O'Nan, author of Songs for the Missing