The Christian Science Monitor

With Appalachian noir, David Joy unmasks race and history in the South

In his unflinching and timely novel “Those We Thought We Knew,” author David Joy weaves two storylines: the return of Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains, and the subsequent arrival of a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan. The man, passed out in his car from inebriation, is discovered by local deputies. Also inside the car is an incriminating klan robe and a notebook filled with county

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