Undone Valley

4.9/5 ( ratings)

Twenty years after his father is murdered outside a rundown motel near their ruined Ohio mill town, college dropout Dalton Hartwell leads a quiet life of denial and repressed rage. He spends his days working as an on-call maintenance man for an apartment complex, where he lives and cares for his dying mother. But when a letter arrives one day, notifying him that Andrew Lareaux, the man who killed his father when he was just a boy, has been paroled from prison, it sets Dalton on an obsessive, uncertain journey in pursuit of the truth surrounding the tragic event.

Meanwhile, as Lareaux prepares for his release and tries to mend his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Ellie, he finds himself bound by blood to a vicious criminal organization, who plans to collect on his debt in unforeseen ways.

As the lives of these three characters converge and become entangled, a current of deception and despair pull them toward a violent confrontation, from which their only hope of escape is to join together in a desperate fight for survival.
Set amidst the blight and devastation of the American Rust Belt, Undone Valley is a grim, gritty novel about the secrets of the past, how they shape and direct the course of our lives, and the brutal truths that are better left buried.