"What begins as intriguing true-crime tales shifts into a psychological deconstruction and a philosophical journey attempting to understand the power that religion--specifically Christianity--possesses to influence one's perception of themselves and reality . Readers looking for a story thick with deeper ruminations underneath an intriguing true-crime narrative will be satisfied." Booklist "A book of rabbit holes: fascinating, maddening, maundering, and often electrifying . Goose pimples become hard to suppress." Garden & Gun "An engrossing and rigorous account of a haunting crime." - Publishers Weekly "A story of true crime that evokes the idea of good and evil both seen and believed." - Kirkus Reviews "Like all great books, Benjamin Hale's Cave Mountain is impossible to pigeonhole. It is a thriller full of suspense and surprises and compulsive page-turning.

It is a rich cultural history of the Arkansas Ozarks and what it is like to inhabit one of the most remote regions of the country, the clash of isolation and violence in the disappearance of two girls. It is beautifully written and reported--lyrical, sensitive, always eloquent." -- Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and The Mosquito Bowl "The damndest mixing of true crime, memoir, and maybe (?) ghost story I've ever read. The original Harper's article gave me the shivers, and this deeper dive is going to have me looking over my shoulder on every hike. Unputdownable." -- Patton Oswalt " Cave Mountain holds an extraordinary story, conveyed and explored by Benjamin Hale with tremendous breadth of perception, immense eloquence, and equal measures of perspective and compassion." -- Jane Hirshfield, author of The Asking: New and Selected Poems "A big hearted, deeply learned work of literary Southern crime. Benjamin Hale goes into the woods looking for a body and leaves with something like grace.

" -- Max Marshall, author of Among the Bros " The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is an absolute pleasure. [It] announces that Benjamin Hale is himself a fully evolved as a writer, taking on big themes, intent on fitting the world into his work." -- New York Times Book Review on The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore " The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is a brilliant, unruly brute of a book . funny, sad and shocking . extraordinary intellectual range." -- Washington Post on The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore "A brave and visionary work of genius . a noisy, audacious, and promising debut." -- San Francisco Chronicle on The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.