Hidden Valley Road

At seventy-five, Lee Trammell has settled into a quiet life in Blue Ridge, South Carolina. Since childhood, Lee has been weighed down by a racist legacy: his father participated in the lynching of a Black man in 1947. When Lee discovers his former neighbors, a Black woman named Del McBee and her twin boys, hiding out in their old house on Hidden Valley Road, he takes them in for the night. The next morning, they discover Del's four tires have been punctured.

The McBees moved out when the Dunlap lads down the road -- Matthew, Mark and Luke -- started flying a huge Confederate flag. After Lee questions them about the tires, Luke Dunlap confronts him with a Confederate musket. Luke's brother Matt shows Lee Luke's room: a repository of white supremacist paraphernalia.

As Lee's involvement with the McBees deepens, he receives a letter from Margo Williamson, a married woman with whom he was in love when she was living in South Carolina. Now she writes to tell him not only of her husband's death, but also of her feelings for Lee. He responds with one line: "Please come for a visit!"

Margo does just that, and Lee's life takes an unexpected turn toward happiness. But that happiness, along with that of his new friends, could be shattered by the same type of prejudice and violence that shaped his life.

Set in the modern South, Hidden Valley Road is an emotionally rich and timely novel about second chances in life, unlikely friendships, the persistence of love, and the precariousness of the world we live in.