The Day of Small Things »

Vicki Lane is the author of Signs in the Blood, Art’s Blood, Old Wounds, and the Anthony Award finalist In a Dark Season. She lives with her husband, two sons, and daughter-in-law on a mountain farm in North Carolina, where she is at work on her next novel, Under the Skin, which Dell will publish in 2011.

 
A night of reckoning . . .
A dawn of danger . . .

In the misty folds of Appalachia, the girl they call Least grows up cursed by her mother’s cruelty and blessed by her neglect. Deemed unfit to join the outside world, Least turns to the wisdom of the land, to voices she alone can hear, to legends left by native Indians, and to the arts of divination and healing. But the time comes when Least has to choose between a doting suitor and her childhood magic, between his church and her spirits. Now, as her life enters its final chapter, her world has been invaded by a violent criminal with a chilling plan. To stop him from committing an unspeakable crime—and to free an innocent child—the woman who was once Least must break long-held promises, draw on long-buried powers, and face a darkness no one else can even see.