Ancient Hours

Michael Bible's tragic and sublime novel tells the story of a massacre in a small Southern town and expands into a heart-breaking meditation on guilt, trauma and redemption.

Harmony, North Carolina is a typical town. The echoes of the past haunt Harmony with lynchings and shootings; mob violence and vigilante justice, but this is all in the past, forgotten. It's the summer of 2000 and Iggy is in the Baptist church, gasoline and a match in hand. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony won't forget.

Told in a kaleidoscope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible examines every dimension of a tragic but all-too-American story in The Ancient Hours. The victims, witnesses, perpetrators, and condemned comingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives. What emerges is a fable of the American South in the highest tradition: soaring, tragic, and eternally striving for redemption.

Softcover.