In the Wild Fields: A Small-Town Mystery
About This Book
Author: E.B.Harding
Description:
Some towns bury their secrets. Others let them grow.
Journalist Griffin Cole has spent eighteen years building a life far from Crawford's Mill, Missouri. He left behind more than his hometown. He left behind first love, old rivalries, and the memories of a father who died in the line of duty. He never intended to return.
Then his editor sends him back.
Human remains have been discovered near the abandoned mill that gave Crawford's Mill its name. The town fears they belong to Lucy Wild, the seventeen-year-old girl who disappeared without a trace one year earlier. For twelve months, hope lingered. Parents locked their doors a little earlier. Teenagers looked over their shoulders. Rumours spread through cafés, grain elevators, football games, and church pews. Everyone believed they knew who was responsible.
Then the sheriff released the only suspect.
Now, with the discovery of the remains, old accusations return with renewed fury. The town demands justice. The sheriff refuses to answer questions. And Griffin quickly realizes that nearly everyone he interviews is protecting someone—or hiding something.
As he revisits the roads he once drove as a teenager, the abandoned farmhouses, endless cornfields, and quiet riverbanks of his youth, Griffin finds himself confronting a past he thought had long been buried. Old friends welcome him home. Old enemies remember him all too well. A woman he once loved still carries the weight of choices made decades earlier, while a community built on generations of shared history struggles to separate memory from truth.
The deeper Griffin investigates, the less certain the story becomes. Every answer uncovers another question. Every interview reveals another silence. Even the people closest to the case seem to be telling only part of the truth.
What began as a newspaper assignment slowly becomes something far more dangerous.
Set against the vast agricultural landscape of northwest Missouri, In the Wild Fields is a richly atmospheric mystery where the landscape is as important as the people who inhabit it. Beneath the endless rows of corn and the quiet rhythm of rural life lies a town shaped by loyalty, pride, regret, and secrets that have survived for generations.
Part literary mystery and part emotional family drama, In the Wild Fields explores the stories we tell ourselves, the truths we bury, and the extraordinary cost of keeping the past hidden.
If you enjoy slow-burning mysteries driven by unforgettable characters, evocative settings, and emotional depth rather than sensationalism, In the Wild Fields invites you into Crawford's Mill—a place where some wounds never heal, and some fields never stop giving up their secrets.