What Silence Will Not Bury Genre: Southern Gothic / Historical Fiction Setting: A rural, ridge-top farming community in 1937. In the summer of 1937, the quiet world of Att and Vicary is shattered by the brutal lynching of their friend, Waite Reynolds, a Black farmer on their ridge. After finding Waite's body, Att retreats into a paralyzing guilt and silence. Unable to express his outrage or pain to the world, he instead pours out his broken heart to Vicary, his best friend, his only friend, revealing the quiet, agonizing truths of his world through his honest assessment of their friendship. In sharp contrast, Vicary, a natural healer, refuses to let the community-or Att-sink into complacency. Driven by a fierce moral clarity, she sees Waite's murder as the latest evidence of a systemic, generational evil. She tirelessly pushes Att to action, condemning what she views as his suffocating indifference, while quietly serving as the community's emotional anchor against the overwhelming currents of racial injustice. Jack, Att's grandson, is drawn to Vicary's uncompromising strength. He seeks her out, bridging the emotional distance that has opened between Att and Vicary. As Vicary works to heal a community wounded by violence and Att tries to protect his family by burying the horror, the tension between them forces a reckoning. The story becomes a desperate struggle against the darkness that claimed Waite, fought simultaneously in the silence of Att's heart, the determined steps of Vicary's resistance, and the awakening conscience of a new generation. Att and Vicary must determine if they can honor their friend and break the cycles of violence and quiet complicity without sacrificing everything they have left.
