Wallace Martin’s debut murder mystery, The Goatman, is destined to be a Southern classic along with Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. This coming-of-age tale set in the mountains of post-WWII North Georgia features a fourteen-year-old Zeb Barton, his irascible surgeon father, and Thelka, the gun-toting maid who mentors Zeb through progressively dangerous times. Even though the book is set in the 1960's, many of the characters are still reeling from the damages of WWII combat while others are being haunted by dead family members. A neo-Southern Gothic tale in the vein of Flannery O'Connor's work, each character contends with their own personal demons while all are under the watchful eye of the Goatman, the subject of many murderous legends.