Washed in the Blood — Stephen Graham Jones

The scene of his mother's gruesome death greets high school senior Cooper as he arrives home from illegally killing a pregnant doe in the wilds of west Texas. In grief and with a sense of helpless guilt, Cooper begins to uncover the details of his mother's life. Raped when she was his age, she never knew who had violated her and left her with the son who is now cast adrift. Everyone knows something in Eberhart, Texas, but silence and fistfights are the only answers Cooper gets. As he tries to string together scraps of evidence, he grows increasingly suspicious of seemingly upstanding citizens. With his best friend Denny and Denny's twin, the ethereal Gina, Cooper spends more and more time hunting, drinking, and holding on to the only people he knows he can trust. Their rural world is tightly circumscribed, yet it contains all of the ugliest and most sublime aspects of the human condition.