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A car crashes late at night in Bentrock, a small, clean-living town in Montana. The passengers, both dead, are the junior high school principal -- a highly respected, married man -- and a young woman who had just graduated from the local high school. Arriving at the scene, Sheriff Jack Nevelson imagines the sad, sordid scandal that will rock the community, and he decides, with an innocence of his own, to save the innocence of Bentrock. Larry Watson's new novel, "White Crosses," follows Jack as he pieces together a face-saving cover-up and traces the consequences, consequences Jack never could have foreseen or imagined. Watson, who wrote "Montana 1948," is a master at evoking mood and place. Here, he conjures up the hot, dusty streets of Bentrock in the mid-1950s, and the "quiet desperation" that has settled like that dust on his characters. Beau Bridges' low-key narration underscores the quiet power and poignance of the story.
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month. Don't miss her audio book reviews on CNN's "Sunday Morning."
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