Zion: A Novel

From Dayne Sherman, the critically-acclaimed author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise, comes a gothic treatment of the American South: a hard-charging depiction of religion, family, friendship, deception, and evil. Zion is a mystery set in the rural South, the story of a war fought over the killing of hardwoods in Baxter Parish, Louisiana. The tale begins in 1964 and ends a decade later, but the Hardin family, faithful members of Little Zion Methodist Church, will carry the scars for life. This edition of Zion includes a Reader's Guide for Book Clubs and Author Q and A. Praise for Dayne Sherman and his work: “Dayne Sherman writes like I wish I could if I was still young enough to change.” --Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over But the Shoutin' and Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story “Sherman’s promising debut chronicles a young man’s thorny return to his Louisiana hometown… Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history, Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale.” --Publishers Weekly “Zion begins ballistic, turns tectonic and ends gothic. The people of this fraught Louisiana town suffer both the shifts of history and the tribulations of their pasts. In Sherman’s dark vision, wood kin burn and kin make hay, setting these troubled characters searching in a spiritual, and sometimes literal, wilderness to find and make right what they can. Get ready for a thrill ride that slams into modernity with Old Testament inevitability.” –Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What Follows & The Jumper