The Names of Our Tears: An Amish-Country Mystery

In Gaus’s fine eighth novel set in the area of northeast Ohio where a large concentration of Amish and Mennonite families live (after 2011’s Harmless as Doves), coexisting more or less peacefully with their “Yankee” neighbors, the murder of Ruth Zook, who recently returned home to Ohio from Florida with a heavy suitcase, leads hard-driving Sheriff Bruce Robertson to discover that young Amish women have been coerced into transporting cocaine from the Sunshine State. Even though the police are distrusted by the people they’re trying to protect, the sheriff’s department attempts to track down the drug ring operating in rural Holmes County. Meanwhile, Pastor Cal Troyer, the minister for an independent church, tries to repair the human damage the crimes have caused. Readers won’t find snappy patter, brilliant deduction, or violent melodrama—just a record of serious, stubborn people plodding along, doing the best they can to heal their community. Agent: Jenny Bent, the Bent Agency. (June)