What is Julia Keller reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Julia Keller, author of Bitter River.

Her entry begins:

Last year I read an excerpt from The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Viking Penguin) by Robert Macfarlane in Granta magazine, and was knocked sideways by its beauty, its erudition, its rousing challenge to the sedentary. I'm ashamed to say that it took me a very long time to go get the book itself. I finally did, and am now embarked upon it once more, and am -- once more -- mesmerized, besotted, exhilarated, intrigued, startled, and charmed. The book is a sort of travel journal that recounts Macfarlane's excursions from his home in Cambridge, England, to various points on the compass -- but it's so much more than that as well. It's a poetic but information-rich meditation on...[read on]

About Bitter River, from the publisher:

In the next stunning novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning Julia Keller, following the popular A Killing in the Hills, a pregnant teenager is found murdered at the bottom of a river.

Phone calls before dawn are never good news. And when you’re the county’s prosecuting attorney, calls from the sheriff are rarely good news, either. So when Bell Elkins picks up the phone she already knows she won’t like what she’s about to hear, but she’s still not prepared for this: 16-year-old Lucinda Trimble’s body has been found at the bottom of Bitter River. And Lucinda didn't drown—she was dead before her body ever hit the water.

With a case like that, Bell knows the coming weeks are going to be tough. But that’s not all Bell is coping with these days. Her daughter is now living with Bell’s ex-husband, hours away. Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, one of Bell’s closest friends, is behaving oddly. Furthermore, a face from her past has resurfaced for reasons Bell can’t quite figure. Searching for the truth, both behind Lucinda’s murder and behind her own complicated relationships, will lead Bell down a path that might put her very life at risk.

In Bitter River, Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller once again weaves a compelling, haunting mystery against the stark beauty and extreme poverty of a small West Virginia mountain town.

Learn more about the book and author at Julia Keller's website.

Writers Read: Julia Keller (September 2012).

Writers Read: Julia Keller.

--Marshal Zeringue