The Haunted Hills: A Romance

In the summer of 1854, two orphaned children arrive by train at a tiny Virginia hamlet in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Perry and Pert Treadway, dressed in Cincinnati finery and blinking at a world utterly foreign to them, have come to be raised by their father's eccentric family on a remote sprawling farm. A formidable aunt, a patriarchal grandfather, and a sharp, grinning slave boy named Tip are the first to greet them. They will not be the last strange souls the children encounter. As the years unspool, Perry and Pert grow up in a valley thick with mystery, folklore, and secrets both human and otherworldly. Neighbors both generous and menacing drift through their lives. Free blacks and enslaved people navigate a world of brutal contradictions just beyond the farmhouse door. And something in the hills themselves seems alive, watching, shaping destinies no one fully understands. Then the War comes, and the valley that sheltered them begins to tear itself apart.