Muir Powell is a shy, innocent, 17-year-old with big dreams and no clue what to do about them. Moody Powell is a few years older and wild. Embittered by the death of his father 15 years earlier, cramped by the narrowness of his mountain world, Moody escapes into moonshine and gambling while Ginny, their mother, watches helplessly.

When Muir decides that his purposes in life is to build a rock church with his own hands, the consequences of his ambition are far-reaching. A community threatens to tear itself apart, people die, and the brothers are forced to confront each other.

Set on the same ground as The Truest Pleasure and Gap Creek, This Rock continues Morgan’s powerful, eloquent cycle of novels about Appalachia.