Excerpt from The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Lane was the only father figure I'd ever known, but I never liked him. Whenever he was at church or with other churchgoers, he was happy and friendly, always offering to help them fix their cars or their broken appliances. But when he was at home, he was always cross, threatening to spank me if I cried for Mom's attention. Mom never spanked or hit us, and Lane's temper scared me.

Two years after Mom and Lane were married, she gave birth to my brother Aaron, who I adored instantly. Having a baby around was like having a new pet. Right after Mom came home from the hospital, she told me I could be her little helper, and I was thrilled. Matt and Luke went to the Mexican public school across the highway from LeBaron, leaving me at home on the farm with Audrey, Mom, and baby Aaron. Even though she was the oldest, Audrey didn't go to school. Mom said Audrey was too much for the teachers to handle. I hated being stuck at home with my sister, but I loved helping Mom take care of my baby brother.

Her beans all clean, Mom stood up and scooped my little pile of pintos into her pot. She knelt down underneath the wood-framed window and filled the pot with water from a spigot that sprouted right out of the cement floor. Mom put the pot on the propane stove and lit the burner with a match. The stovetop hissed and the air smelled like sulfur. Mom stirred the beans a couple of times, then went to go check on Audrey, telling me to watch to make sure the pot didn't boil over.

I sat in the kitchen thinking about how different my life would be if my dad hadn't died. If he were still alive, Mom would be happy and would stop worrying all the time about how much it cost to feed all of us and how Audrey seemed so troubled. If my dad hadn't died, maybe my grandparents would still live in the colony with us. I just couldn't understand why my dad had been killed. I knew my uncle Ervil had him shot. Everyone in the colony knew that. Ervil and his followers sent lots of letters to our church elders threatening to kill more people and bomb the town. Mom said that Uncle Ervil was wanted by the FBI and that they had people looking all over Mexico and the United States for him. Each time we got a new threat, Mom would tell us to keep the doors locked. "And if I'm not home and you hear gunshots and explosions," she always said, "take your baby brother and run to the peach trees, cover him, and lie down in the dirt so no one can see you." Uncle Ervil was like a ghost haunting us. Knowing that he and his followers were still out there terrified me. Would Ervil come back for me? And what would happen if he murdered my mom the way he had murdered my dad?

Excerpted from The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner. Copyright © 2016 by Ruth Wariner. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.