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From the award-winning author of The Absence of Mercy, comes a gripping and darkly psychological novel about family, suspicion, and the price we are willing to pay to protect those we love the most.It's the summer of 1954 and the residents of Cottonwood, California are dying. At the center of it all is six-year-old Danny McCray, a strange and silent child the townspeople regard with fear and superstition, and who appears to bring ruin to those around him. Even his own mother is plagued by an illness that is slowly consuming her. Sheriff Jim Kent has watched the people of his town suffer, increasingly aware of the whispers and rumors surrounding the boy--and he worries someone might take drastic action to protect their loved ones. Then a stranger arrives and Danny and his ten-year-old brother Sean go missing.