-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by David Joy
From award-winning writer David Joy comes a searing new novel about the cracks that form in a small North Carolina community and the evils that unfurl from its center.
Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger.
Meanwhile, local deputies find a man sleeping in the back of a station wagon and believe him to be nothing more than some slack-jawed drifter. Yet a search of the man's vehicle reveals that he is a high-ranking member of the Klan, and the uncovering of a notebook filled with local names threatens to turn the mountain on end.
After two horrific crimes split the county apart, every soul must wrestle with deep and unspoken secrets that stretch back for generations. Those We Thought We Knew is an urgent unraveling of the dark underbelly of a community. Richly drawn and bracingly honest, it asks what happens when the people you've always known turn out to be monsters, what do you do when everything you ever believed crumbles away?
"The mystery at the novel's heart plays out in an unexpected way, with Joy employing a deft touch to the plotting....An emotionally complex procedural that goes to unexpected places." —Kirkus Reviews
"Joy [gets] the reader invested in his characters and conveys a clear sense of small-town life." —Publishers Weekly
"[A] searing stunner of a book...It's like a Nina Simone song that contains 'an infinite sort of sadness,' yet closes with a promise of hope." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Joy weaves the stories together and comes out the other side with a richly-layered vision of a small town living through the broader crises of a divided nation increasingly enamored with violence." —CrimeReads
"Those We Thought We Knew is a beautifully fearless contemplation. The best novels ask the hard questions and task us to come up with answers. Joy is asking the hardest question and daring us to answer truthfully." —S.A. Cosby, author of Razorblade Tears and All the Sinners Bleed
"In every line of this outstanding novel, you feel David Joy's deep connection to the mountains he comes from and the people who live there. With his faultless ear for dialogue and exceptional sense of place, he has crafted a beautiful literary crime thriller about belonging and betrayal in rural America." —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning
"Those We Thought We Knew is a dark cyclone in search of truth. Spinning the gritty complexities and colors of human nature with beautiful, immersive descriptions of the land, Joy writes both holiness and irreverence with the same weight and care. A writer to be trusted, he is one of our best." —Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Half-Blown Rose
This information about Those We Thought We Knew was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Alan Rhew
David Joy is the author of The Line That Held Us (winner of the 2018 SIBA Book Prize), The Weight of This World, and Where All Light Tends to Go (Edgar finalist for Best First Novel). His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of publications, and he is the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey and a co-editor for Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing. Joy lives in Tuckasegee, North Carolina.
If you liked Those We Thought We Knew, try these:
by Daniel Mason
Published 2024
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
by Wole Soyinka
Published 2022
From the first Black winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of our fiercest political activists, a fictional meditation on power and greed - at once a literary hoot, a whodunit, and a scathing indictment of political and social corruption.
by Leah Weiss
Published 2021
A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II.
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
