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In A Killing in the Hills, a powerful, intricate debut from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Keller, a mother and a daughter try to do right by a town and each other before it's too late.
What's happening in Acker's Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker's Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?
One of the witnesses to the brutal incident was Carla Elkins, teenaged daughter of Bell Elkins, the prosecuting attorney for Raythune County, WV. Carla was shocked and horrified by what she saw, but after a few days, she begins to recover enough to believe that she might be uniquely placed to help her mother do her job.
After all, what better way to repair their fragile, damaged relationship? But could Carla also end up doing more harm than good—in fact, putting her own life in danger?
*BONUS CONTENT: This edition of A Killing in the Hills includes a new introduction from the author and a discussion guide
Julia Keller
Julia Keller earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at Ohio State University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Julia was chief literary critic and staff writer at the Chicago Tribune, where she won the paper's first Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. She is the author of an eight-volume mystery series; a science fiction trilogy for young adults; a biography of Richard Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun; and Quitting, an argument for the limits of perseverance. Julia has contributed many on-air essays to The NewsHour on PBS and NPR’s All Things Considered and delivered a TEDx talk.
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