A hypnotic tale of terror and temptation, William Elliott Hazelgrove's <i>Mica Highways</i> is an emotion-packed novel that deftly captures the unique landscape of the American South.  With its fierce vision of love, violence, and redemption, this powerfully haunting work recalls the intensity and passion of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> and <i>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.</i><br><br>April 4, 1968.  To the world, it was the day an assassin's bullet struck down Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.  To Charlie Tidewater, it was the day that life as he knew it was over--the day his beautiful mother suddenly died.<br><br>Tamara Drake Tidewater was a descendant of one of Virginia's first families, and Charlie was only nine years old when she passed away.  The newspaper obituary said she died peacefully, but Charlie knows that the obituary was a lie.<br><br>Thirty years later, Charlie remains haunted by the mystery surrounding his mother's untimely death.  Newly divorced, he has returned to his childhood home near Richmond, down the glittering mica highways of rural Virginia.  He hopes that discovering how his mother really died will finally enable him to lay the ghosts of his troubled past to rest.  But the one man who can help Charlie has no intention of unveiling horrors he has spent three decades trying to hide.<br><br>To unearth the truth about Tamara's death, Charlie must delve into the darkest corners of the Old South, into its twisted secrets and decadent desires.  Shifting seamlessly between Charlie's present-day search for answers and the South's racially charged past, <i>Mica Highways</i> reveals the hidden sins of one small town with a dark history of burning crosses and cold-blooded murder.<br><br>A searing fusion of fact and suspense fiction, <i>Mica Highways</i> is as compelling as it is disturbing--a spellbinding and incisive tale from one of today's most gifted storytellers.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>