Quiet Child

<p><strong>From the award-winning author of <em>The Absence of Mercy</em> comes a gripping and darkly psychological novel about family suspicion and the price we are willing to pay to protect those we love the most.</strong></p><p>It's the summer of 1954 and the residents of Cottonwood California are dying. At the center of it all is six-year-old Danny McCray a strange and silent child the townspeople regard with fear and superstition and who appears to bring illness and ruin to those around him. Even his own mother is plagued by a disease that is slowly consuming her.</p><p>Sheriff Jim Kent increasingly aware of the whispers and rumors surrounding the boy has watched the people of his town suffer--and he worries someone might take drastic action to protect their loved ones. Then a stranger arrives and Danny and his ten-year-old brother Sean go missing. In the search that follows everyone is a suspect and the consequences of finding the two brothers may be worse than not finding them at all.</p>