Excerpt from Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I'd stood there for a moment in relief. Seriously? I thought. I can just be on my way? It seemed so unlikely that the thing I had been hop­ing for was the thing I had been given.

Now, safely home, I lay in bed for another hour listening to the loons calling to each other. I thought about the friends of my youth: Tripper and Casey, Wailer and Rachel, Maisie and Quentin. I wondered what the world would have been like, if that door in the old prison had never creaked open, and those creatures had never gazed upon us? Even now I could see those cold eyes glowing in the dark, asking the questions to which, all these years later, I still had no answer. What is this world? What is this life?

A loon cried in the dark night. I know where you are.

Excerpted from Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.