The Back Forty

A young man has gone missing in the town of Mapleville, and the youngest member of one of the oldest families in town has just received a phone call informing her that her eldest brother has possibly killed a man and buried him on their family farm, some two years prior. Does she call the police? Does she confront her brother directly? What do her parents know about it? THE BACK FORTY is the chilling tale born from the love between a brother and a sister, a father and son, and the secret that eventually will come between them.
Part memoir and part crime novel, the story weaves between the three-week period occurring just after the phone call, and her childhood while growing up on the family farm.The protagonist's flashbacks reveal the long and complex relationships she has with her family, providing a counterpoint to her attempts to grapple with the moral and ethical quandary she must now confront .
The story of THE BACK FORTY is a gritty portrayal of a family gone mad from secrecy. From the glimmering silos dotting the Indiana farmlands, to the vast fields of soy, wheat and corn, the book presents a disturbingly bleak picture of familial love pushed beyond its limits.
THE BACK FORTY is an American chronicle of crime and redemption – a sweeping saga of one family’s inability to deal with the forces of change, and one woman’s courage in the face of the addictions that are corrupting not just a town, but a nation.