That Bright Land is a new Southern gothic thriller from Terry Roberts, winner of the 2012 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.
In the summer of 1866, Jacob Ballard, a former Union soldier and spy, is dispatched by the War Department in Washington City to infiltrate the isolated North Carolina mountain community where he was born and find a serial killer responsible for the deaths of Union veterans. Based on true events, That Bright Land is the story of a violent and fragile nation in the wake of the Civil War and a man who must exorcise his own savage demons while tracking down another.
Terry Roberts's direct ancestors have lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina since the time of the Revolutionary War. His family farmed in the Big Pine section of Madison County for generations and is also prominent in the Madison County town of Hot Springs, a consistent setting in his novels. Among his forebears are prominent bootleggers and preachers but no one who, like Jedidiah Robbins, combines both preoccupations. His debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and his second novel, That Bright Land, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award as well as the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South. Born and raised near Weaverville, North Carolina, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
MacLeod Andrews was born and raised in Louisville, KY. He is a Company Member of Rising Phoenix Rep Theater Company, with whom he has performed in a number of productions Off-Broadway, as well as West Coast, New York, and World Premieres. He leads a double-life as an award winning audiobook narrator. Currently resides in Los Angeles.