North of Portsmouth (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996871730)

Paul Newcombe suffers the unlucky coincidence of seeing a ghost from his past on local television news. His old neighborhood pal, Gary Auro, now a deputy in a Portsmouth, Ohio, has been given the task of solving a mystery of a skull unearthed from a gravel pit. Driven by the need to restart old rivalries, Paul makes his way to Portsmouth to reclaim his past. Set against the backdrop of the annual Roy Rogers festival, a nostalgic cowboy extravaganza with live theater, the reunion lurches toward chaos, as Auro tries to hold together his life unsettled by the return of his own ghost. Woven among the story of Paul and Gary is the story of Kinnell and June, who are the darkened heart of the river town, who terrorize the streets and flee to a settlement in South Dakota, known as Jupiter Hill, once Kinnell confesses his crimes, real and imagined.