The Twelve-Mile Straight

This is not the sort of epic that jumps through space and history. Instead, it turns on itself, over and over again, circling back to one event—a lynching in 1930—and another related one—the birth of two babies known as the Gemini Twins—in a way that gives astonishing fullness to a handful of lives on a few square miles of Georgia soil. By its satisfying and disquieting end, everyone in the story will have been given their reasons, even if you may not want to give them all your admiration. It's the most you can ask for from good fiction.