The Grove

The last time farmer Dexter McCray went off his medication, someone wound up dead. So, after waking from an alcoholic blackout to discover his tractor stuck in a ditch and the body of a teenage girl in the cottonwood grove bordering his cornfield, things begin to look worryingly familiar.

With no alibi and a creeping suspicion that he might be to blame for the girl’s death, Dexter decides to investigate the crime himself. He can’t tell anyone. Not his friend, the sheriff, nor his estranged wife, whose love he’s desperate to win back. And certainly not the Tollivers, his redneck neighbors.

Now, isolated and alone, Dexter turns to the only person he believes he can trust: the dead girl herself.

In this gritty noir novel, John Rector weaves an intensely sinister tale that pits reality against hallucination, truth against improbability. Is Dexter motivated by guilt or insanity? And what really happened that night in The Grove?

John Rector is a prize-winning short story writer and the author of the novel The Cold Kiss, optioned for a feature film now in development. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.