The hollows

Set in the fall of 1926 in Bronwyn County, Ohio, Montgomery's intricate, atmospheric sequel to 2019's The Widows finds Sheriff Lily Ross called to investigate the death of an elderly woman who fell from the top of the Moonvale Hollow tunnel into the path of an oncoming train. Was it an accident, or was she pushed onto the tracks by a ghostly figure in white, as the brakeman insists? Lily learns that the victim, Thea Kincaide, was an escaped inmate from the Hollows Asylum for the Insane and a long-lost cousin to her best friend, jail mistress Hildy Cooper, who sometimes looks after Lily's two young children. In retracing Thea's path from the asylum to the site of her death, Lily discovers disturbing evidence that an evil spirit from the past is trying to rise again. Realistic characters complement a great sense of place. Montgomery does an admirable job of portraying brave women such as Lily who must become the support of their families in the face of their own grief after their husbands' deaths. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group. (Jan.)

In this follow-up to her LJ-starred The Widows, set in 1926 Ohio, an elderly woman is killed walking along the tracks in Moonvale Tunnel, which cuts through the Appalachian hills. Newly elected Sheriff Lily Ross questions the brakeman's insistence that he saw a ghostly figure on the tracks beforehand, but where did the woman come from? No one has been reported missing.

After the violent death of an elderly woman in 1926, a young sheriff's investigation inadvertently reveals the deeply contentious history of her Ohio county, tracing back to the Civil War.Lily Ross, a widowed mother of two small children who was appointed to fill out her husband's term as sheriff after he died, and then won her own election, is barely holding her life together in her small Ohio town. When she is notified that a woman has died after a fall from the tunnel over the railroad tracks, she learns quickly that many in town, including her best friend Hildy Cooper's mother; her rival candidate for sheriff; and the employees of the Hollows, the asylum the woman escaped from, would all prefer the death quietly be declared accidental with no questions asked. Lily's investigation is increasingly complicated when she finds a white robe belonging to a local Women of the Ku Klux Klan group at an abandoned house the victim passed through the night she died. These current events grow even more urgent once the victim is identified as Thea Kincaide, a relative of Hildy Cooper's, who witnessed her father's murder as a child and testified that an escaped slave committed the crime. Montgomery's second novel in a series about Kinship, Ohio (The Widows, 2019), and Lily Ross is a skillfully told murder mystery that features a rich array of characters and a sophisticated portrayal of a small town grappling with its own racist past and ongoing conflicted present. Secondary plots, including Hildy's affair with a miner despite the objections of her overbearing mother and the white schoolteacher's relationship with an African American man seeking to integrate the union of mine workers, are equally well developed and deeply connected to the larger story about the tensions in Kinship. Despite such complex plots and characters, the novel moves along briskly without sacrificing eloquence in its prose.A satisfying historical murder mystery set apart by its compelling female cast. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.