For hundreds of years, Appalachian forests have drawn wanderers away from lights, comforts, and everyday life, into unchanged, less familiar, and even mysterious places.
Hogan's favorite spot overlooked the Nolichucky River's emergence through the mountains as it snaked alongside the railroad tracks into Erwin, Tennessee. He sat atop the rock-scrabble ridge and closed his eyes in warm sunlight, listening to wrens and the rushing water below.
The first drops of rain woke him, but the woods were already too dark, and Hogan lost the path. A foxfire glow led him to a cave, and a black, stone-hard spear. His touch lit the spear with blue light emanating from its deeply etched lines, bright enough for him to find the path home.
Hogan learned that a nick from the spear instantly healed, leaving insight and understanding. The deeper the wound, the greater the insight. Stab someone through the heart and they will die, to awaken with a hairline scar and perfect understanding of their greatest enemy.
The spear transformed Hogan. He made amends at work. He finally reached out to the woman he'd longed for, and they married.
But the world neared the brink. Apocalypse approached, and Hogan feared that only the spear could stop it.
To save the world, Hogan must use the spear - on the President.