Regret the Dark Hour

When Nole Darlen kills his father—the man who has built the largest house anyone in these East Tennessee hills has ever seen—the single resounding gunshot sets up a dark patchwork of memory and expectation that gathers-up townspeople, hill-folks, lovers and outlaws. Here is a tangled tale involving the dead man's wife, neighbor Burlton Hobbes, desperado Jem Craishot, and a grizzled muskrat-trapper named Hogeye.

Central to the story is a pistol that Nole Darlen has taken from a card game the...