Farming the Dead Roads

Two years after the pulse, Iris Calloway is still alive on a Tennessee farm she doesn't deserve. Six goats. A greenhouse full of tomato starts. A dead husband's tools she can't bring herself to use. Then a stranger walks out of the mountains with a broken hand and a rifle he's pretending not to have. Tucker Hale was a cavalry scout. He's spent two years walking away from anyone who wanted him for what he could do with a gun. Iris doesn't want a gun. She wants the fence mended and the well lined and somebody to pass a plate to at supper. They build a life one task at a time — an orchard, a smokehouse, a dog with no name. But the county seat has become a militia town, and it conscripts every man who can hold a rifle. When it comes for Tucker, Iris loads the shotgun she taught herself to use, drives a trade no sane farmer would make, and brings him home. Some worlds end. Some begin under a pear tree.