No one innocent. No one free. Nothing sacred.

Holy City is the captivating debut from Henry Wise about a deputy sheriff who must work alongside an

unpredictable private detective after he finds himself on the outs from his sheriff's department over his

unwillingness to look the other way when an innocent man is arrested for murder.

After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond

to rural Southern Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to crime and defeat.

Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded-up homes

seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on.

Will’s efforts to go about his life are wrecked when a mysterious, brutal homicide claims the life of an old friend,

Tom Janders, forcing Will to face the true impetus for his return: not to honor his mother’s memory, but to pay

a debt to a Black friend who, in an act of selfless courage years ago, protected Will and suffered permanent

disfigurement for it.

Meanwhile, a man Will knows to be innocent is arrested for Tom’s murder, and despite Will’s pleas, his boss

seems all too content to wrap up the case and move on. Will must weigh his personal guilt against his public

duty when the local Black community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from Richmond,

to help him find the real killer. It would seem an ideal pairing—she has experience, along with plenty of sand,

and Will is privy to the details of the case—but it doesn’t take long for either to realize they much prefer to

operate alone.

Bennico and Will clash as they each defend their untraditional ways on a wild ride that wends deep into the

Snakefoot, an underworld wilderness that for hundreds of years has functioned as a hideout for outcasts—the

forgotten and neglected and abused—leaving us enmeshed in the tangled history of a region and its people

that leaves no one innocent, no one free, nothing sacred.