The Orchard of Second Faces

By the time Nathan Wren returns to Cairn, the town has already begun to turn on itself.His family's orchard has produced an impossible second crop. The apples are sound. The harvest is profitable. Yet beyond the Wren property, animals have begun killing their own.Then old grudges sharpen. Private humiliations become public punishments. Families, neighbors, churchmen, deputies, and hired hands discover reasons for cruelty that feel entirely their own.Nathan searches for rot, poison, mishandling-anything that can be measured. But every test produces another contradiction, and every secret he uncovers gives Cairn one more reason to spill blood. As violence spreads across farms, churches, and the county sheriff's office, Nathan's need to identify a single cause becomes as dangerous as the people he is trying to understand.The orchard keeps bearing. The people of Cairn supply the rest.The Orchard of Second Faces is a merciless rural folk-horror novel about inheritance, obsession, and the brutal persistence of human grievance.In Cairn, the past has not returned.It never left.