Under the Field: A Novel in Twenty-Five Black Files

Mara Voss knows where lies hide in public records: amended dates, softened language, missing initials, duplicated reports. She used to expose those lies for a living. Now the paper is gone, rent is late, and her brother Eli's disappearance has been filed for eleven years under one word she has never forgiven: runaway. When a cash job appears for overnight Briar County records disposal, Mara takes it. In the old Briar County courthouse basement, she is paired with Tess Mullen, daughter of a man convicted in the notorious Blue House murder. Their instructions are simple: yellow boxes get shredded, red boxes go into secure disposal, black boxes burn unopened. Then Tess opens one. Inside are not expired records, but black files: twenty-five strange, brutal stories of people erased by paperwork, grief, hunger, land deals, false alibis, and official silence. Every file is a horror story. Every file is also evidence. As the night turns public and the county records director tightens his control from across town, Mara and Tess have to decide what truth is worth preserving, what guilt belongs in the record, and how to keep the dead from being burned twice. Under the Field is a Briar County gothic thriller told through one desperate night and twenty-five black files the system tried to destroy.

Pages: 168, Paperback, Independently published