Blood Cypress

No one in Lower Congaree much cares that Beau Carson has gone missing. He's ten, he can't speak, and he's just another kid from a Carson household that lost its standing when his father died. When the sheriff's deputies show up, they're more interested in eyeing Lila and needling her twin brother Quentin than searching for Beau — and everyone in town knows the one rule that matters: don't go in that swamp.

But Beau is out there, and as the night stretches on, Lila realizes she may be the only one willing to go find him. What she finds in the cypress and black water is stranger, and far more dangerous, than a lost child. Blood Cypress is a Southern Gothic novella about a fractured family, a town's casual cruelty, and the price of going where no one else will.