River of Heaven

On an April evening in 1955, a teenage boy named Dewey Finn died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town. River of Heaven begins some 50 years later and centers on the story of Dewey's boyhood friend, Sam Brady, whose solitary adult has been formed to a large degree by what happened in the days leading up to that evening on the tracks. It's a story Sam would do anything to keep from telling. But when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, the bits and pieces are revealed.