ONCE A PERSON LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN, THEY NEVER COME BACK, NOT REALLY. THEY'RE LOST FOREVER. Nellie Clay married Hobbs Pritchard without even noticing he was a spell conjured into a man, a walking, talking ghost story. But her mama knew. She saw it in her tea leaves: death. Folks told Nellie to get off the mountain while she could, to go back home before it was too late. Hobbs wasn't nothing but trouble. He'd even killed a man. No telling what else. That mountain was haunted, and soon enough, Nellie would feel it too. One way or another, Hobbs would get what was coming to him. The ghosts would see to that. . . . Told in the stunning voices of five women whose lives are inextricably bound when a murder takes place in rural Depression-era North Carolina, Ann Hite's unforgettable debut spans generations and conjures the best of Southern folk-lore--mystery, spirits, hoodoo, and the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian landscape.itchards. Some things in life just can't be avoided and getting mixed up with Nellie was one of them. Mama told me the same bedtime story each night. She told it with such detail I was sure Hobbs and Nellie were real. But they were just characters in a tale spun to keep me in line. They were my moral compass. Or so I believed... Haunted and healed by ghosts of the past in surprising and unexpected ways, the women of Black Mountain experience their amazing journeys at the hands of talented story weaver Ann Hite.