Those We Thought We Knew

Winner of the 2023 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction
Winner of the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award
Winner of the 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award

One of Vanity Fair’s Favorite Books of 2023

“A beautifully fearless contemplation.” –S. A. Cosby

From award-winning writer David Joy comes a searing new novel about the cracks that form in a small North Carolina community and the evils that unfurl from its center.

Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger.

Meanwhile, local deputies find a man sleeping in the back of a station wagon and believe him to be nothing more than some slack-jawed drifter. Yet a search of the man’s vehicle reveals that he is a high-ranking member of the Klan, and the uncovering of a notebook filled with local names threatens to turn the mountain on end.

After two horrific crimes split the county apart, every soul must wrestle with deep and unspoken secrets that stretch back for generations. Those We Thought We Knew is an urgent unraveling of the dark underbelly of a community. Richly drawn and bracingly honest, it asks what happens when the people you’ve always known turn out to be monsters, what do you do when everything you ever believed crumbles away?

About the Author :
David Joy is the author of Those We Thought We Knew (winner of the 2023 Willie Morris Award), When These Mountains Burn (winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award), The Line That Held Us (winner of the 2018 Southern Book Prize), The Weight of This World, and Where All Light Tends to Go (Edgar finalist for Best First Novel). His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of publications, and he is the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey and a coeditor of Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing. Joy lives in Tuckasegee, North Carolina.

Review :
One of:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Best Southern Books of 2023
Garden & Gun’s Best Books for (and About) Southerners of 2023
BookRiot’s 10 Best Appalachian Books of 2023
CrimeReads's Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of Summer 2023

"[David Joy] is a man who sees his homeplace clearly and who writes like his hand was touched by God." —The New York Times
 
"[A] bracing novel…both a murder mystery and a deeply intimate story of generational relationships and loss." —Vanity Fair

"A refreshing departure…Joy has a knack for heightening intrigue…. He’s like a magician playing a shell game, and it’s an effective way to keep readers on their toes. The book is filled with gorgeous prose, particularly when Joy turns his considerable talents toward descriptions of the natural world." —Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Unflinching and timely…Joy has mastered the high-stakes, page-turning Appalachian-noir style, and through this lens, the preconceived notions of life in the mountains are overturned." —Christian Science Monitor

"[A] searing stunner of a book...It's like a Nina Simone song that contains ‘an infinite sort of sadness,’ yet closes with a promise of hope." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Ambitious. . . Joy paws all of these familiar tropes with the subtlety of a lynx. He is a writer deeply sensitive to the humanity of his characters. Joy is stretching his wings like a red-tailed hawk and is conscious of what that entails. . . . His lean, economical style owes more to the bleak beauty of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy. Scattered throughout his books are character portraits as detailed and evocative as scrimshaw and nature writing to rival James Dickey. Joy knows how to set a mood. Even the quieter moments pack a feeling of menace." —Journal of Appalachian Studies

"[Joy’s] a brisk plotter, well versed in mountain lore, with a sure ear for unvarnished, unstereotypical mountain dialect." —Wilmington Star-News

"Gripping, gritty, suspenseful, and fearless…this book looks to tackle some big-time subjects as they play out in a small North Carolina mountain town, including racism, community, and the weight of history." —Garden & Gun

"David Joy uses both familiarity and pain to unearth the trust of our humanity in nuanced ways and manages to create a voice all his own….[A] page turner." —Southern Review of Books

"[A] thought-provoking read that deftly explores racism’s deep and complicated roots." —theSkimm
 
"David Joy’s new book blends Southern Gothic Noir and classic whodunit style with a complex intersection of race, friendship and history." —Blue Ridge Public Radio
 
"Joy is a master of pacing, creating tightly wound prose, frequently delivering a gut punch and unanticipated plot twist in a single, well-crafted sentence…. Those We Thought We Knew is much more than a riveting murder mystery. It’s a gorgeous narrative that explores how racism, pride, and lack of communication poison and destroy relationships and communities." —Salvation South
 
"With short, biting chapters and multiple leads and points of view to follow, Joy details the unravelling of a community." —Chapter 16

"Joy weaves the stories together and comes out the other side with a richly-layered vision of a small town living through the broader crises of a divided nation increasingly enamored with violence." —CrimeReads
 
“Those We Thought We Knew [is] about an enlightened insight into the human condition.” —Smoky Mountain News

"[A] wild read…Joy has a special way of capturing the communities in the mountains of North Carolina." —BookRiot

"[A] salient novel...Through rich character introspection and acidic dialogue, Joy masterfully encapsulates the larger conversation about America's hidden past occurring in the real world in real time." —Booklist

"The mystery at the novel’s heart plays out in an unexpected way, with Joy employing a deft touch to the plotting....An emotionally complex procedural that goes to unexpected places." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] powerful novel that pushes beyond Joy’s rural noir to confront timely issues." —Library Journal

"Joy [gets] the reader invested in his characters and conveys a clear sense of small-town life." —Publishers Weekly

"Those We Thought We Knew is a beautifully fearless contemplation. The best novels ask the hard questions and task us to come up with answers. Joy is asking the hardest question and daring us to answer truthfully." —S.A. Cosby, author of Razorblade Tears and All the Sinners Bleed

"In every line of this outstanding novel, you feel David Joy’s deep connection to the mountains he comes from and the people who live there. With his faultless ear for dialogue and exceptional sense of place, he has crafted a beautiful literary crime thriller about belonging and betrayal in rural America." —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning

"Those We Thought We Knew is a screaming wound bleeding fiery poetry. This is a brilliant novel about racism, generational trauma, reckoning with the past, and the way awfulness tends to hide in the places you least expect it. A heartfelt, brutally honest portrait of the heart and roots of the North Carolina mountains that echoes the entire country. Powerful. Timely. Necessary. Read it." —Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

"In Those We Thought We Knew, community is a double-edged sword: a source of comfort, memory, and belonging, but also treacherous terrain where the roots of intolerance and old ways of thinking run deep. Joy takes us into the hearts and minds of characters of all stripes—bad actors and do-gooders, cynics and true-believers—in this revealing portrait of modern America. Not many writers could write so unflinchingly or so honestly. Those We Thought We Knew is a book for our time: poignant, fearless, and best of all, true." —Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar and We Are Each Other’s Harvest

"Those We Thought We Knew is a dark cyclone in search of truth. Spinning the gritty complexities and colors of human nature with beautiful, immersive descriptions of the land, Joy writes both holiness and irreverence with the same weight and care. A writer to be trusted, he is one of our best." —Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Half-Blown Rose

"Remarkable for its fierce honesty and propulsive storytelling, Those We Thought We Knew holds a mirror up to both those who don’t want to be seen and those who desperately need to be, often blurring the lines between the two. As rooted in place as it is in the heart, this book refuses to fade even after it ends. A must-read novel by one of today’s most relentless writers." —M.O. Walsh, author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize