Author Wiley Cash is a lyrical writer whose descriptions of North Carolina are heartbreaking in their beauty and cruelty. WHEN GHOSTS COME HOME takes place in Oak Island 1984, when unexpected happenings at a small rural airport cause the townspeople to act in expected ways, much to their sheriff’s disappointment. The mystery of the downed aircraft at the airport and the FBI presence adds a layer of uncertainty to a town already bubbling with troubles barely hidden.The pacing of the story and the character development make this a tale that is impossible to stop midway. It is just so very good. There are some twists and turns that are unexpected and with Cash’s other books, fate plays a heavy hand. This is a wonder of a book. I received my copy from the publisher.

Wiley Cash is one amazing story teller and this book is one amazing read. Combine the story telling with fluid writing and finely drawn characters and the result is a book that I could not put down with characters that haunt me long after the last page was turned.

As the story begins, we find Winston Barnes, a sheriff in a remote island in rural North Carolina in 1984, being awoken in the dead of night by a low flying plane. Fearing a plane crash, he goes to investigate. What he finds is an abandoned cargo plane and a dead local Black man. This is the opening of a story that I thought was going to be a police procedural but instead turned into a character-driven novel involving simmering racial tensions, greedy developers and the grief associated with losing a loved one, be it a baby or a husband. As Sheriff Barnes works to solve the mystery of the abandoned plane and the murdered resident, he must deal with small town politics and the FBI swooping in to assume the responsibility for his cases. Emotions are running high in town as locals suspect the murdered Black man was part of a drug smuggling ring and attack the home of his widow. Barnes' home life is far from ideal either; his daughter, who has just lost a baby and whose marriage is rocky, appears seeking solace in her childhood home. Oh, and Barnes' wife is battling cancer and he's facing an election he will probably lose. Not too much to deal with!

This is an all consuming novel packed with emotion, social commentary and loss. The characters are genuine and I found myself rooting for Sheriff Barnes to solve the mysteries all the while consoling his daughter, taking care of his wife and trying to get reelected.! This is a book not to be missed.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for an advance copy of this book. The publication date is September 21, 2021.

I love the author's writing, and he is a favorite author of mine,. However, the racial tension theme did not work for me in this book. It's not that I'm not sympathetic or that I'm not aware of the problem. All I have to do is turn on the news. I read fiction for escape and entertainment, so reading about racial tension and prejudice in fictions is a hard pass for me.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this book, and I'm sorry it wa snot for me. It's not the book, it's me, so I will not be leaving a review on social media or retail sites..

Small town sheriff, wife with cancer, daughter just lost her baby, 1984, plane crash, murdered Black man, drug smuggling, racism, more racism, grief, violence. This was a beautifully written book about a lot of heavy topics. The mystery wasn’t too mysterious, but it didn’t really matter. I especially loved the daughter character.

Highly recommend!

The book didn't grab me but was written in a cinematic way. I could definitely see it being turned into a film.

4.5
This was a great novel. The characters were realistic, the emotions were tangible and the mystery kept the reader turning the pages. I loved the Barnes family and the relationships between parent and child as well as husband and wife. A lot of emotion is conveyed with just a few scenes. There is grief faced by several characters - skillfully depicted. Cash does a wonderful job with dialogue, setting and characters. I immediately liked Sheriff Barnes and his family and felt tremendous empathy for the Bellamy family. I wasn't sure how the story would end but had a suspicion that it would follow this trajectory. A solid read and one that can be enjoyed by mystery and drama lovers, alike!

Like Pat Conroy, Wiley Cash knows all about life in a small town and is very familiar with the location where the story is set. Winston Barnes is the sheriff on Oak Island when a mysterious plane crash rocks the town and stirs up racial tensions.

Master storyteller Wiley Cash tells the story of Winston Barnes, the local sheriff, in When Ghosts Come Home. Winston and his wife hear a loud noise, and as he investigates, he finds a plane had crashed unexpectedly in a small town in North Carolina. Near the plane, he finds a classmate of his daughter's who has been murdered. This beautifully crafted and well-written book full of secrets, murder, corruption, and grief will have you on the edge of your seat until the end.

I thought this book was perfectly fine until I got to the very abrupt ending—what in the world? Did pages get cut? There was no resolution. That felt like such a lazy way out of this story. This was a fine, if pretty run of the mill, mystery with very stereotypical Southern characters that I think many people will enjoy. Like I said, I didn’t mind it. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was a perfectly adequate way to spend an afternoon. The ending, or lack thereof really, was just so disappointing.

My thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow and Custom House for an advance reader’s copy.

Such a good storyteller! Mr. Cash’s newest novel deals with themes familiar from his previous works: racism, greed, and hope. His characters are wonderfully developed and endowed with personality and motivation. Smooth prose makes this a quick read.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC to read and review.

This is my first book by Wiley Cash and it reminded me of old detective and police shows, that my parents used to watch, in the seventies...and I loved it. Sheriff Barnes hears a low flying plane in the middle of the night and soon discovers the plane crashed in an airfield not too far away...on closer inspection he discovers a local that has been shot and killed.

I love books that take place in the south, the locations are characters in and of themselves. This was a multilayered story, much like an onion you gently peel away each skin and discover something totally different inside. This was a very character driven story, not that there wasn't a great plot, this book had that in spades as well. But I really liked getting to know the Barnes clan and the populous of Oak Island.

This was a story that was both suspenseful and heartbreakingly sad, Cash writes about regular people in such a way as you can't help but flip the pages quickly. The storyline deals with many issues including racism, addiction and cancer, to name but a few. And like I said at the beginning of this review it was my first book by this author but it won't be my last. You can tell Cash writes from the heart.

What I like about Wiley Cash is all his books are different. Good story and plot lines and interesting characters. Kept me engaged

Sherriff Winston Barnes and his wife are awakened in the middle of the night by an airplane. Winston goes out to see what is going on and finds a murdered person. As his investigation gets started, there are way more questions than answers. It was a black man murdered that went to school with Winston's daughter Colleen. Colleen now lives in Texas but she and her husband have suffered a terrible loss and she comes home to visit. I loved Winston's relationship with Colleen. The investigation brings to light terrible racism in the small community. As the Winston and his team of police try and figure out why Rodney was murdered, what the heck is going on with the abandoned plane, what was in the plane and who was flying it, it leads to a great murder/mystery/thriller book. I read this book very quickly as I couldn't put it down! I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

I wasn’t familiar with Wiley Cash, but I enjoyed this book enough to read another. He is a fabulous storyteller who transported me to a small, North Carolina island community in 1984 plagued by racial tension.

Character-driven and haunting, it was as much about a disintegrating family as it was about a murder investigation. Wiley Cash delved into the hearts of richly drawn and achingly sympathetic characters dealing with heavy circumstances. When Ghosts Come Home would have been a sold four stars if it hadn’t ended so abruptly. I still can’t figure out exactly what happened! 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Wiley Cash’s newest novel When The Ghosts Come Home is a Fantastic Read. Set on Oak Island in Brunswick County, North Carolina in the 80’s the story begins with a mysterious plane crash on a tiny run way where no plane should be landing,. The plane is empty, and a black man is found dead near by. Wiley captures Oak Island perfectly, throwing in small town politics, race relations and murder. This was a story I couldn’t put down. The ending was Jaw Dropping, and I would have loved the story to continue for a few more chapters. All in All A Winner! I highly recommend this book.
Thank You to Wiley Cash, Net Galley, William Morrow and Custom House for allowing me to read this novel.

4.5 stars. What a wonderful read — exquisitely written and character-driven with a page-turning plot that is full of mystery and suspense! The story takes place in 1984 North Carolina and focuses on the events surround a plane that crashes near the airport and a man who appears to have been murdered nearby. The local sheriff, who is up for re-election and fears he may well lose his job in just a couple of weeks, spearheads the investigation.

All of the characters contributing to the storyline are very realistic, particularly Winston Barnes (the sheriff who is the main character), his wife Marie (who is battling cancer) and his daughter Colleen, who are specially likable. As the novel progresses, each has to face obstacles in his/her life where the choice made about which road to take will make all the difference. Various topics that are pertinent today (racism, prejudice, family relationships and the environment) are woven into the narrative as well, making this a multi-layered and powerful novel.

All in all, I enjoyed this novel immensely as I did one of the author’s previous works (A Land More Kind than Home), and I look forward to reading more of his!

This book started out as a 5, but lost a point for a VERY abrupt ending...

Winston is the sheriff of Brunswick County, on the coast of North Carolina. He has been sheriff for a couple of decades, but is facing opposition in the upcoming election. In bed with his wife, they both hear a plane pass over their house in the early morning hours, when no plane should be flying into the small municipal airport. Winston goes to investigate, and finds a local young black man dead by a large plane that is entirely empty. Not only is the plane empty, but it is completely wiped down as well - no fingerprints to be found. Winston and his deputies immediately assume this plane brought in drugs. But the question is, was the dead man involved, or was he just investigating the possible crash, like Winston was?

This book touches on racism, drug smuggling, and the tensions in a small town in a changing world during the 1980's. It starts off really strong. Cash is an excellent writer and his descriptions of people and places will resonate with readers, especially those familiar with the North Carolina coast, Oak Island and Wilmington in particular.

But the last two or three chapters feel really, really rushed. It's like Cash reached a certain point, decided the book needed to be over, and tied up loose ends in the least amount of words possible. I cannot say why I was so disturbed by what happened because I don't want to give any spoilers, but it stretches credulity quite a bit and doesn't feel true to the story. I expected a more ambiguous ending, with more beautiful prose, rather than what we got in the last chapter of this book.

However, I still enjoyed this book and would recommend it to our patrons. Thanks to Netgalley for this advance copy of When Ghosts Come Home.

Fans of Wiley Cash’s exquisite southern gothic tales of broken people clawing for something better in the contradictory gumbo of the American South have had a long seven-year wait since his last award-winning crime novel. In WHEN GHOSTS COME HOME (Faber, $32.99), Sheriff Winston Barnes and his cancer-battling wife are woken by a plane coming in low over their home in coastal North Carolina. It’s the 1980s, their town has a small airstrip, but no one should be landing at night. When Barnes, who’s in the final days of a re-election fight he’s destined to lose, discovers a large plane crashed yet empty, and the body of a local black man shot dead nearby, he embarks on an investigation that will forever alter him and his community. As rumours fly, Barnes also has to deal with a visiting FBI specialist, his grieving daughter, and Confederate-flag waving locals terrorising the black neighbourhood. Trauma weighs on many characters in Cash’s latest novel, which hums along on lyrical prose, rich characters, and an exquisite sense of place. Something to savour.

I am a Wiley Cash fan and love the way he captures the essence of North Carolina in all of his novels. When Ghosts Come Home is a good, old-fashioned character driven Southern crime novel. The residents of Oak Island find themselves with a plane crash, a murder, and several mysteries on their hands; race and class muddy the waters of the investigation. I thought the ending was abrupt and wished that the stories and all of their loose ends had come together a bit more. Not my favorite Wiley Cash novel to date, but still and enjoyable read.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for this ARC.

My first book by Wiley Cash was not a disappointment; in fact, in was unputdownable! I devoured this book in two sittings eager to find out the name of the culprit.

Small town North Carolina Sheriff Winston Barnes and his wife live near a local airfield and are awoken by the sound of plane flying low and when it suddenly disappears believe it may have crashed. When Winston investigates, he discovers a large, empty plane on the airfield and the dead body of a local black man, who went to school with his daughter Colleen.

Speculation in their small community runs rampant that the man was part of a drug ring, but his family is adamant that he was not, and Winston tends to agree. As he begins investigating the murder, tensions begin to run high and sides are drawn, even on his own force. This is Southern fiction at its best, spotlighting painful racial injustice and an honorable man doing his best to do the right thing when that isn’t a popular choice.
The shocking ending left me with my mouth hanging open and shaking my head. I was stunned, totally stunned. I am looking forward to reading Mr. Cash’s backlist. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, William Morrow, for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion. I gave this book four stars.