A broken man, a broken country.

Silas Flood is a former minister and army chaplain. Ten years ago, he survived the horrors of the American Civil War but lost his faith and left the church. Now he finds work as a writer for a New York newspaper.

In the summer of 1874, Flood is dispatched to the village of Moriah, Vermont, where the brothers Thaddeus and Ambrose Lynch are said to conjure up spirits and speak to the dead. In Moriah, Flood questions the Lynch brothers and attends their strange séances in which the resurrected dead dance and sing and give comfort to the living. As Flood investigates the nature of these phenomena, he is forced to come to terms with his own past and with the hold it has upon him.

“Mills deftly jumps between narratives as the story unfolds, his prose saturating every page with dread as he teases out his characters' secrets and lies. This intense novel will draw in readers outside Mills's usual audience.”

— Publishers Weekly

“Mills' spare descriptions and terse dialogue contribute to the appropriately eerie atmosphere, as do the robust journal entries that precede each chapter. Another stunningly twisted tale mired in history from a master of the macabre.”
— Booklist

"[Mills's] trademark devotion to character, setting, atmosphere, and creeping dread is obvious... a slow burn novel immersed in the thick, claustrophobic atmosphere of a dark dream from which there is no waking up."

— Rue Morgue