“A Horse Brought Us Here is a book in a class all its own. Readers who enjoy historical fiction or period piece fiction will enjoy this superb novel about a tragedy that shakes a small town and changes the lives of those in it forever.” —Seattle Book Review

“Author Dershie McDevitt beautifully captures the essence and spirit of small town America in the 1950s in this well-written novel that builds tension steadily.” —Readers’ Favorite

Excitement grows all day Friday in the quiet Wyoming cattle town of Juniper as cheerleaders and football players ready themselves for the biggest football game of the year. When the Homecoming Parade finally wends its way down Main Street, everyone strains to see who's been chosen Homecoming Queen. They clap delightedly when they spot BJ Bonniface in her pink strapless formal sitting high on the back of the big Buick convertible, though no one is surprised. She's the popular steady girlfriend of star quarterback, Rob Hitchcock. Life continues to unwind as life is expected to on such iconic weekends. The home team even wins the game. But on Monday morning, Juniper High is shaken to its foundations when the announcement is made that the Homecoming Queen is dead.

“Act as if nothing has changed,” advises the Dean of Women. “Carry on as normal for the good of the school.” But there are those in the student body who doubt that BJ died from a bee sting. How are they to carry on? Her best friend, Nella Fortune, and her boyfriend, Rob, have private and personal reasons to question the story, but there is no one to go to and nothing to be done. Both will sleepwalk through the rest of their senior years, consumed with what they know and what they cannot tell. But the clock is ticking. How long can such a secret be kept?

In A Horse Brought Us Here, Dershie masterfully weaves the tapestry of small-town fiction into a tense, disturbing story. She invites readers to travel back to a time when life looked simple but often was not. With every turn of the page, she evokes our nostalgia for a time in the West when some of life's mysteries may have been best kept buried.

Author Bio:

Dershie McDevitt, a lifelong writer, holds an MLA from UNC, Asheville where she won The Wilma Dykeman Award for excellence in nonfiction writing. Her popular Callahan Banks Mystery Series (including Just Holler Bloody Murder and Perils of a Pregnant Sleuth) follows nature lover, biology professor and crime solver Callahan Banks through suspenseful southern whodunits on a South Carolina barrier island. Dershie and her husband, Larry, live outside of Asheville, North Carolina. They have three adult children, four perfect grandchildren and share their mountain valley home with rescue pooch, Sassafras, and a particularly bossy cat named Orphan Annie.