"Indigo Field brims with multigenerational drama, earthy spirituality, and deeply imagined characters you are unlikely to forget." —Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Invention of Wings, The Book of Longings, and The Secret Life of Bees In the rural South, a retired colonel in an upscale retirement community grieves the sudden death of his wife on the tennis court. On the other side of the highway, an elderly Black woman grieves the murder of her niece by a white man. Between them lies an abandoned field where three centuries of crimes are hidden, and only she knows the explosive secrets buried there. When the colonel runs into her car, causing a surprising amount of damage, it sparks a feud that sets loose the spirits in the Field, both benevolent and vengeful. In prose that’s been called “dazzling” and “mesmerizing,” in the animated voices of trees and birds and people, in Southern-voiced storytelling as deeply layered as that of Pat Conroy, Marjorie Hudson lays out the boundaries of a field that contains the soul of the South, and leads us to a day of reckoning.

Marjorie Hudson continues her search for Virginia Dare, the first English child born on American soil, who disappeared with the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island more than 425 years ago. In this second edition, Hudson takes us deeper into her research and travels, bringing us closer to her discoveries, both old and new.

Like birds blown off course, the characters in these stories need a place to roost-somewhere to settle long enough to repair their ragged hearts-and they find it near the banks of the mythical Sissipahaw River. In the centerpiece story, an eighteenth-century Eno Indian tells of the fiery fate of his adopted father, English explorer John Lawson. In the surrounding stories, the age-old conflicts between newcomer and old-timer play out as twenty-first century retirees, carnies, runaways, heartbroken women, and farmers stumble into new lives and new insights in Ambler County, North Carolina. "Hudson's prose is pure as birdsong," says novelist Doris Betts. "These fine stories of change and discovery are a field guide to the human species in transition."