David Joy addresses his latest novel, When These Mountains Burn, and the opioid crisis in the mountains of North Carolina. Patrick Millikin from The Poisoned Pen is a skilled interviewer, so you’ll want to listen to this conversation. You can order signed copies of When These Mountains Burn, and copies of Joy’s other books, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2BhRPLk
Here’s the summary of When These Mountains Burn.
Acclaimed author and “remarkably gifted storyteller” (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them.
When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time. Frustrated by the slow pace and limitations of the law, Raymond decides to take matters into his own hands.
After a workplace accident left him out of a job and in pain, Denny Rattler has spent years chasing his next high. He supports his habit through careful theft, following strict rules that keep him under the radar and out of jail. But when faced with opportunities too easy to resist, Denny makes two choices that change everything.
For months, the DEA has been chasing the drug supply in the mountains to no avail, when a lead–just one word–sets one agent on a path to crack the case wide open . . . but he’ll need help from the most unexpected quarter.
As chance brings together these men from different sides of a relentless epidemic, each may come to find that his opportunity for redemption lies with the others.
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Here’s David Joy in conversation with Patrick Millikin.