One Foot in Eden

The year is 1951 and Holland Winchester, the local thug and a war veteran, has gone missing from his small, backwater South Carolina town. The local sheriff, Will Alexander, has a gut feeling Holland’s been murdered but the sheriff can find neither the body nor the killer. He has his suspects but no evidence. And his suspects have their stories, their motives and their truths. But secrets can only stay buried so long.

Told from the perspective of the sheriff, a local farmer, his wife, their son and the sheriff’s deputy, One Foot in Eden explores the crime, shifting suspicion, blame and guilt with each new voice. This brilliant southern gothic novel observes the consequences of love and murder across generations.

Praise for One Foot in Eden:

Multi-layered and populated with memorable characters, One Foot in Eden is a wonderfully gritty, tangled novel that drags the reader deep into the undertow of a dreadful crime, as well as the community and individuals whose lives are forever changed.

Chris Womersley

Ron Rash is one of the most exciting new writers from the American south. His fiction, which includes the novel Serena, contains much of the tragedy and emotion that we get from Faulkner but without the ambiguities and baroque language of that godfather of southern US fiction. Read more.

Kevin Rabalais, Age

Equal parts vintage crime novel and Southern Gothic, full of aching ambivalence and hard compromises, and rounded off by bad faith and bad choices, One Foot in Eden is a veritable garden of earthly disquiet.

Los Angeles Times

Rash’s mastery of the subtleties of human experience ensures that One Foot in Eden is not just coldly captivating, it is also lively and compelling…readers of Peter Temple will delight.

Age