Under the Falls

Stone Mountain is a fictional community high in New York's Adirondack Mountains, far removed from the region's prosperous tourist towns. Its economy has hollowed out, its population dwindling, its amusement park shuttered. Tyler Sinclair, the lead singer and guitarist of a rock band called Stone Mountain, is its sole famous export. The novel follows Tyler's reluctant return to the place he fled at 18 and the cascading violence and reckoning that follow.

Tyler travels up the Mountain in a limousine with his musical partner and girlfriend Beth Delaney, his manager Jason, and two touring musicians. Jason booked a benefit concert at the local high school without Tyler's permission to raise money for Doc (Tim Dockery), a childhood friend paralyzed from the waist down since a rope-swinging accident at a local swimming spot called the Falls. Tyler has not set foot on Stone Mountain in 18 years. As the limo climbs, he recalls the day at age 11 when his best friend Curt found him hiding behind the Falls after his father beat his mother so badly she was hospitalized. Curt comforted him, and the two boys linked pinkie fingers, pledging to be best friends forever.

At Doc's trailer, Tyler sits for a televised interview. Doc recounts the accident: Tyler gave him a running boost on a rope swing, but Doc landed on an iron pipe atop the dam, breaking his back. Tyler pulled him from the water. Afterward, Doc drives Tyler to the abandoned campground in his modified orange hearse. He tells Tyler he doesn't blame him but implies others on the Mountain do, resenting Tyler for profiting from songs about their lives and naming his band after the community. Before Tyler exits, Doc says the only thing Tyler did wrong that day was pulling him out of the water.

The concert begins well, but during the break the mayor announces that Doc has died of a blood clot. The crowd demands Tyler sing "The Long Fall," his most famous song, inspired by Doc's accident. When he approaches the microphone, hostile voices accuse him of causing Doc's injury and tell him to go back to Nashville. A thrown beer bottle gashes the mayor's forehead. Deb Washington, a young Black police officer, fires her weapon into the air to restore order. Beth and Jason drag Tyler off the stage.

Backstage, Tyler encounters Curt, now Stone Mountain's police chief. Curt is married to Freddi, a Black woman Tyler knew in high school, and they have a teenage son, Curtis Jr. Curt confirms he does not blame Tyler, and the two men link pinkies again. Beth hands Tyler a slip of paper with a phone number Curtis Jr. left with the limo driver, but Tyler pockets it without calling.

On the drive down, Jason reveals he is quitting. Tyler realizes Jason is in love with Beth. Tyler reflects on his complicated history with Freddi: As a teenager, he kissed her while she was Curt's girlfriend and had sex with her in Sacred Heart Chapel before fleeing the Mountain. A vehicle suddenly appears behind the limo with blinding high beams and a blaring horn. Beth screams at Tyler to call the number, but he refuses. The vehicle rams the limo, which crashes through the guardrail into a ravine. Jason and the driver are killed; Tyler and Beth survive with severe injuries.

Deb is sent to investigate hours later. She notices Curt's pants caked with dried mud when he arrives, suggesting he had already been in the ravine. The narrative reveals that Freddi was driving Doc's orange hearse that night, enraged by seeing Beth kiss Tyler onstage. Curt helps Freddi return the damaged hearse to Doc's trailer and begins covering up her involvement.

Tyler endures a long hospital recovery. His crushed trachea will likely end his singing career. Beth, transferred to a Boston hospital, refuses to speak to him. Curt visits almost daily, both to monitor what Tyler remembers and out of genuine devotion. Meanwhile, Curt's marriage deteriorates. The family's finances depend on drug runs Doc had been making in the hearse, transporting opioids under cover of medical appointments. With Doc dead, Freddi pressures Curt into making the runs himself, forcing him to confront how deeply complicit he already is. He also has Everett Crenzal, a local man who owes him a favor and who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, repair the hearse.

When Curt brings Curtis Jr. to the hospital to take Tyler home, the boy freezes in the doorway, begins shaking, and vomits. The plan collapses. Deb drives Tyler back to the Mountain instead, where he visits Sacred Heart Chapel, the shuttered Catholic church where he practiced guitar as a teenager. Tyler decides to buy it. Deb's mother Connie, a part-time realtor, shows him the property.

During a phone call, Curt confides that his marriage is crumbling. After hanging up, Tyler spots Curtis Jr. watching him from the shadows and pieces everything together: Beth wanted him to call the boy that night in the limo; Curtis Jr. was driving the hearse; and Freddi has told the boy that Tyler, not Curt, is his biological father. Tyler calls out, telling the boy he is not to blame, but Curtis Jr. vanishes. Moments later, Everett appears, takes Tyler's phone, and knocks him unconscious.

Tyler is held captive in the chapel, drugged twice daily with opioids on Freddi's orders. Freddi visits, mocks Curt by playing his desperate voicemails, and has sex with Tyler while he is in a drugged, semi-conscious state. Tyler eventually skips two pills, retrieves his hidden phone, and calls Curt, saying they probably won't see each other again and asking him not to blame Freddi. He also calls Connie to thank her. Both calls sound like goodbyes.

Curt confronts Freddi at home. She taunts him with details of her encounters with Tyler and shows him photos of Curtis Jr., asking which man the boy resembles. Curt strikes her, horrified at himself. When Freddi takes a call from Everett and tells him to carry out their plan, Curt understands she has ordered Tyler killed. He shoots out every window of their house and tells Freddi to go.

Deb, connecting Connie's account of Tyler's strange call with reports of music from the chapel, drives there and finds Tyler unconscious. Everett, hiding in a pew, fires and hits her Kevlar vest. She returns fire and kills him. Tyler is revived by paramedics.

State police interview Curt, who tells a partly fabricated story claiming he caused the limo accident by chasing it with emergency lights. He is relieved of his duties. Freddi disappears. Deb, named temporary chief, meets Curt one last time. Curt tells her that corruption begins with small concessions, each making the next easier, until doing the right thing is no longer possible.

Nine months later, Tyler returns walking with a cane, his bones weakened by opioid use. He has spent autumn and winter in Nashville recovering and writing songs with Beth, who is now recording a solo album in the renovated chapel. Tyler has stepped back from performing and funded the rebuilding of the campground dam. Curt, living alone in a modest cottage, meets Tyler at the Falls. He confronts Tyler about sleeping with Freddi and reveals that Curtis Jr. has come home after Freddi sent the boy back. Curt demands that Tyler say aloud that Curtis Jr. is Curt's son. Tyler does. Curt breaks down, and Tyler holds him. They do not link pinkies; that gesture belongs to a world that no longer exists. They sit together listening to water spill over the dam, and Tyler reflects that even in a shattered world, tomorrow might be better than today, and neither man will be alone.