When poetry meets vengeance in the heart of coal country, justice bleeds in verse.

In the coal-scarred hills of Pennsylvania, a deputy named Darling faces a murder that tears open old wounds and buried grudges. When a local woman is found dead in her small-town store, the clues lead back to a name the county hoped it had buried—Smathers, a family synonymous with violence, madness, and myth.

As Darling digs deeper into the case, he discovers that history in these hills doesn’t stay buried—it festers. The further he follows the trail, the closer he comes to a man who reads poetry between acts of brutality and believes himself the keeper of a twisted legacy.

The Poet Laureate of Dagus Mines weaves crime, folklore, and noir-grit into a chilling Appalachian elegy. McFadden’s prose—lean, lyrical, and darkly funny—captures the uneasy beauty of rural America, where the ghosts of the past still hold the living in their grip.

A haunting story of retribution, myth, and the fine line between justice and obsession.

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