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

"Just sick," Big Connie said, leaning over to inspect Martin's decapitated body.

"You don't reckon a cult did this do you?" Ren asked.

"Not no cult," Big Connie said. "Just pure-dee sickness is all it is."

"But what about that clay man Woot?" Ren said.

"What clay man?" the sheriff asked.

"It ain't anything Aaron," Wooten said. "Found him strung up on the porch other week ago. I don't know, big dummy-looking thing made of dirt and leaves and shit-what-all else. Probably just some kids messing around."

"And you ain't even going to talk to Lyle Crews?" Ren said.

Big Connie cut a look that made the sheriff frown.

"I'll talk to Van," the sheriff said. "See what we can't find out."

They got together a search party at Woodrow's Pit Cook Bar-B-Q. Men who'd soon die as look a black person in the face would yet go over at The Hills for Woodrow's pulled pork and ribs. Never ate inside the low block building though—their usual compromise was to carry out. Come lunch you'd see pickups parked all along Jaybird Ridge, which divided Elberta from Freedom Hills, and men eating from foam containers balanced on the hoods. This day they made an exception and did not carry out. Woodrow's ribs were ringed with a beautiful pink halo just inside the hard black bark, and required a gentle tug of the teeth for the meat to come loose from the bone. Perfect. The pulled pork came by the pound and dressed with a vinegary tomato-based sauce that had peaches in it for sweetness. Woodrow'd learned to smoke hogs from his great-granddaddy, who was a Louisiana slave, and he kept what he claimed were a real set of iron shackles in a glass case built into the counter.

Aaron Guthrie went over the search plan while the men sopped puddles of dark-red sauce with pieces of white loafbread. They'd start out down below Wooten and Tammy's trailer along the Elberta River, he said. The bank was karsty, all run-through with sinkholes and caves where Tammy might of, the sheriff gently put it, got lost. Others would search The Seven and its dense woods. A crew was on its way from Poarch County to drag De Soto Lake. After the sheriff finished talking he asked Wooten if there was anything he wanted to add.

Wooten stood up, ducking a ceiling fan coated in one hundred years of dust and grease, and thanked everybody. But, he said, it didn't matter one lick where in the valley they looked for Tammy. "She's five hundred miles away by now," he said. "And if there's one thing I know it's she ain't ever coming back to Elberta, Alabama, so long as she lives."

There were a few halfhearted attempts to encourage Wooten otherwise. Then the men finished their barbecue and set out in a line of pickup trucks. Hound dogs on toolboxes, pink tongues dangling like flags in the wind.

"Why don't you come with me," the sheriff said to Wooten. He popped a little white heart pill in his mouth and crunched it with his molars. "Down at the office."

"Go ahead and arrest me Aaron. Only way you'll keep me from being out yonder with every other damn fool you done gathered up for this."

The sheriff relented, and Ren and Wooten headed out to catch up with the rest of the search party. Other side of The Peach Pit they met Lee Malone in his truck and stopped in the road to speak. He was carrying Ricky Birdsong home. After Ren told what'd happened, Lee wouldn't have it any other way but to come search for Tammy too. Bad idea, Ren knew, especially since the Peach Days incident and everything prior to Maybelle's death.

"Ricky didn't look good," Ren said after they'd pulled away.

Wooten grunted and scratched his beard. Sawdust sprinkled onto his britches. He brushed it off and readjusted how he sat.

Ren fooled with the radio. Sometimes The Peach faded out the closer you got to the Prince Building, as if all the voices and music were being shot out at too steep an angle to be heard in town. Ren wanted to know if Pedro Hannah had broken the news about Tammy being missing yet. Pedro was midcommercial though, rambling on about an upcoming bean supper at Elberta Second Baptist Church, then about Big Connie Ward extending his Peach Days sale for one more weekend and one more weekend only.

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.