Excerpt from Treeborne by Caleb Johnson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Later that night he drove to the limits of Elberta County, following pitiful dirt roads without names that snaked in and out of the wooded hillfolds. Spotted nothing but whitetail deer in briar-choked fields, fat possums that sneered as they ran in front of his tires, millions upon millions of papery moths and mosquitoes and gnats that gathered momentarily in his headlights before being smashed to smithereens against the warm grille. Buying this new used pickup had been Tammy's idea. The thought of Wooten driving it aroused in her some affection toward him that'd long been absent. But this affection had dulled just like the free wax job Big Connie Ward threw in with the purchase. If Wooten had married any other woman in Elberta, Alabama, he knew, they would of silently figured out a way to live out their predicament. Unhappy marriages common as clay. But he hadn't married just any woman. He'd married a Treeborne and, goddamn it, he was paying for it.

He pulled up near the water tower and drank six more cold beers while watching the other vehicles strategically parked in moon-cut shadow. He got hisself riled up thinking Tammy might be in the backseat of one with an even younger man than he—maybe a member of the Conquistadors varsity squad. He got out and listened at a high school couple rut and moan. Nearly yanked them through the cracked window, then he caught hisself. Young love. The dial tuned to The Peach. It was late enough that Pedro Hannah could get away with playing rock-and-roll music. Nobody awake to hear but kids like these and the men who worked owl-shift at the coal mines down in Bankhead and, tonight anyway, Wooten Ragsdale. Between songs Pedro said there was nothing new to report about last week's Peach Days incident. Wooten was so drunk he did not register what incident the boy meant nor his wife's involvement in it.

The sun was up, slowly turning the valley blue as if it'd sunk underwater, time Wooten arrived at the Hernando de Soto Dam. He knocked on a metal door. When it opened there stood his brother-in-law, Ren Treeborne, wearing nothing but a pair of red-and-white-checkered drawers and a gold chain around his hairy neck.

"Hell is it Woot?"

"She's gone."

"Who?"

"Tammy," he said. "She ain't been home the last three nights."

They took Ren's pickup, the floorboards littered with lakeshore sand and pinched cigarettes. Empty coke-cola bottles rolled out from underneath the seat then back again. Ren cranked down the driver's-side window with a pair of pliers then handed them to Wooten. Hot air stirred up the sparkling floorboard grit as Ren turned right onto 31. From there it wasn't far to Wooten and Tammy's trailer.

They walked around inside then throughout the yard, hunting for signs among the weeds and the construction materials and the above-ground swimming pool. Found nothing that could be interpreted as such. Near the edge of the woods Ren believed he caught a whiff of rot, though he couldn't be sure. Wooten said the dog was missing too. Ren knew Tammy wouldn't of taken that damn mutt if she'd run off.

"We ought to call Aaron," he said.

"Let's wait just a day or two."

"Woot."

"I can't stand admitting she's left me Ren."

"She's my sister Woot."

"I know it."

"What if she's somewhere hurt and needing help?"

"I know it," Wooten said. "Don't you reckon I know?"

Ren hated seeing a grown man so ashamed. He knew his baby sister could be flighty. They'd all worried about her marrying Wooten. Tammy had sworn she'd found pure-dee love this time. Who was Ren to doubt? Wooten had invited Ren, Luther, Hugh and Maybelle to witness the proposal outside the Ragsdale chickenhouses and slaughtering facility. One of Elberta's biggest employers since Prince's Peach Cannery shut down in the twenties. Tammy had just got on at the water department. Wooten owned some land on which he'd parked a trailer. This trailer. Tammy was, she told her family, a year older and much wiser than she was after high school when she left for the Gulf Coast.

Excerpted from Treeborne by Steven Johnson. Copyright © 2018 by Steven Johnson. Excerpted by permission of Picador. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.