The Last Sin-Eater of Black Hollow
A Novel

About this book:

In the fog-choked hollows of Black Mountain, the dead don't rest—they wait. Seventeen-year-old Silas has just inherited the oldest, most reviled trade in the valley: sin-eater. With a mouthful of salt and a crust of bread, he must swallow the darkest deeds of the dying so their souls can pass and their bodies stay buried. But each meal drags another man's murders, betrayals, and cruelties into his own blood, and the weight is crushing him faster than it crushed his grandfather.

When a furnace worker dies with a thirty-year-old secret burning in his chest, Silas tastes a cowardice so cold it freezes the marrow. Meanwhile, something ancient stirs in the creek mist—William Vance, buried without a sin-eater, clawing his way up from the clay. The preacher's prayers can't stop him. The iron slab on his grave won't hold him. And Silas's grandfather is coughing up black blood, his vessel finally cracking after fifty years of holding the valley's rot.

As winter closes the gap, Silas faces a line of dying sinners stretching to the ridge: a preacher's brother who won't stay down, a witch on Iron Ridge who knows the true cost of the trade, and the terrible truth of what happened to the father who tried to run. In Black Hollow, you don't choose the burden. You only decide whether to break—or become the thing that keeps the dark fed.