Category: Part 1

The land doesn’t announce itself when you arrive. There’s no sign welcoming you to Four States, West Virginia—no marker to tell you that this place mattered once, or that it still does. You find it only if you’re looking, tucked along a narrow road in southern Marion County, where the hills fold inward and the…

This book exists because there was no way to leave this story untold. For many years, I tried to do exactly that. I moved forward. I built a life. I learned how to close chapters and live with what came next. But this one never closed. It stayed with me—quiet at times, loud at others—waiting…