Cold Way Home

[An] emotion-charged mystery.... Keller''s sleuths are easy to like and the murder story is moving; but the object of fascination here is Wellwood a state-run mental institution with a dark history as a repository for ''rebellious unruly women.'' ―The New York Times Book ReviewPulitzer Prize-winning author Julia Keller welcomes readers back to West Virginia where her lyrical and moving stories of the people of her native state have unfolded since A Killing in the Hills the acclaimed first novel in the series.Deep in the woods just outside Acker''s Gap West Virginia rises a ragged chunk of what was once a high stone wall. This is all that remains of Wellwood a psychiatric hospital for the poor that burned to the ground decades ago. And it is here that Bell Elkins – prosecutor turned private investigator – makes a grim discovery while searching for a missing teenager: A dead body marred by a ghastly wound that can only mean murder.To solve the mystery of what happened in these woods where she played as a child Bell and her partners – former sheriff Nick Fogelsong and former deputy Jake Oakes – must confront the tangled history of Wellwood and its dark legacy while each grapples with a private torment. Based on a true chapter in the troubled history of early treatment for psychiatric illness The Cold Way Home is a story of death and life of despair and hope of crime and – sometimes but not always – punishment.