On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals sightseeing in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker, witness to and reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy, is drawn once more into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice. Now in paperback, John Lane’s award-winning first novel Fate Moreland’s Widow has been singled out by reviewers and critics as a noteworthy exploration of the cotton mill culture of the South. Coupled with Lane’s second novel, Whose Woods These Are, a fictional outline begins to take shape in readers’ minds of mythical Morgan County, South Carolina.