
SILVER FALCHION, DERRINGER, THRILLER, MACAVITY, and SHAMUS AWARD WINNING CRIMEWRITER
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RICHARD HELMS
A KIND AND SAVAGE PLACE

The Newest Dramatic Historical Novel from Richard Helms!
It's 1954. The place is Prosperity, North Carolina, a small farming community in rural Bliss County. Three teenagers, the championship-winning offensive backfield for Prosperity High, and lifelong friends, are unwilling participants in a horrifying crime that results in a young man's death.
One of the friends harbors a tragic secret that could have prevented the crime, but revealing it would ruin his life, so he stays silent, fully aware he will carry the stain of guilt his entire life.
The three buddies go their separate ways for fourteen years, until another tragedy pulls them back to Prosperity in 1968. They are now in their thirties, and in the midst of a time of social and racial unrest in America.
They discover the man who committed the crime back in 1954 is now the mayor of Prosperity, and rules the town with an autocratic iron fist, backed by his own private force of sheriff's deputies who forcibly intimidate and silence any malcontents.
Worse, he plans to run for Congress.
A Kind and Savage Place spans half a century from 1942 to 1989 and examines the dramatic racial and social turmoil of that period through the microcosmic lens of a flyspeck North Carolina farming community.
A Kind and Savage Place, the 22nd novel by Silver Falchion, Derringer, Thriller, Macavity, and Shamus Award-winning author Richard Helms, will be available on all online bookseller sites on March 1st, 2022!

PRAISE FOR A KIND AND SAVAGE PLACE by RICHARD HELMS!
"Heart-breaking, unflinching, and evocative--Richard Helms' wide-screen coming of age historical novel creates a new Spoon River. The fabric of a small town and its residents is woven with hopes and fears, with love and bitterness, with the power of family and obligation, and with relentless and devastating change. Fans of Wiley Cash and William Kent Krueger will be especially drawn to this multi-generational clash of cultures--and the life-changing lessons, large and small, that must continue to be learned."
– Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today Bestselling Author/ Five Time Agatha Award Winner
