Big Lies in a Small Town

In 2018, twenty-two-year-old Morgan Christopher is serving time in a North Carolina prison for a crime she didn't commit when an unexpected visitor offers her a way out. A recently deceased artist's will stipulates that Morgan — and only Morgan — restore a decades-old mural in time for the opening of a new gallery. She has no training in restoration and no idea why she was chosen, but freedom is freedom, so she says yes.

Nearly eighty years earlier, in 1940, a young New Jersey artist named Anna Dale wins a national competition to paint a mural for the post office in the small town of Edenton, North Carolina. Alone and eager to prove herself, Anna moves south into a community where old prejudices run deep and dangerous secrets lie just beneath the surface — and where being an outsider can cost far more than a commission.

As Morgan peels back the grime on Anna's canvas, she uncovers unsettling images hidden in the paint — axes, knives, blood — and, with them, the story of what really happened to Anna Dale. Told in two braided timelines, Big Lies in a Small Town is a suspenseful novel about art, injustice, and the truths a town would rather keep buried.