The Bell Beneath Jocassee. The Horsepasture Series, #2

Most people think the past stays buried. That is a lie. Especially in Horsepasture. When Lake Jocassee drops low enough to uncover the drowned bones of the old valley, people in The Wilds start whispering again. About swallowed farms. Lost roads. Church ground under the water. Things the lake remembers better than the people standing above it. Then a boy disappears. An empty boat drifts back through the fog.
Blood is found where no blood should be. And what begins as another mountain story turns into something far worse. Because the truth rising out of Jocassee is not just old grief. It is proof. Proof that a man did not simply vanish years ago. Proof that families were cheated. Proof that some people built their future on what was stolen from the dead, the grieving, and the forgotten. Now Eli Mercer, Nora Talley, Boone Cutter, and Sheriff Amos Weatherby are pulled into a reckoning that will not stay quiet.
The deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes that someone in the present is still desperate to keep the past underwater. And desperate men do dangerous things. If you like Appalachian suspense, buried family secrets, haunted mountain atmosphere, and small-town corruption that cuts all the way to the bone, The Bell Beneath Jocassee will pull you under and not let go. Because some things were buried by water.
Others were buried by men. And when the lake gives them back, somebody always has to pay.