title: The Foothills of Heaven
author: McKinney, Michael
description: In this ‘stand alone' sequel to the critically acclaimed novel, A Thousand Bridges, The Foothills of Heaven finds Katherine and Mac returning to the Florida panhandle one year after the murder case that brought them together. Mac, a private detective who became entangled in Katherine's fight to save her daughter, comes back home with Katherine as his wife. They have a baby now, and have been willed a farm and land by a deceased friend. Katherine hopes to find a place to 'fit in,' and Mac wants to build a new home for them.
  A series of murders that locals say are being done by Satan Worshipers, whom they claim belong to a new experimental 'school' leased to one portion of Mac and Katherine's land, puts the two in the middle of a war between those locals and the 'outsiders' at the school. Then, the murders begin happening very close to home, driving a wedge between them, threatening to tear their marriage apart.
       Mac has always been a loner, and has never fully recovered from his former girlfriend's murder in the panhandle. He wants to be left alone, wants to build a home for his family on the same piece of land a dear friend died protecting. The same land where he saved Katherine, and she saved him.
       Now, as war escalates between the townspeople and the ‘school,' as the murders seem to point toward that school, Katherine and Mac take opposite sides. She accuses Mac of driving her away from her new friends, and he accuses her of risking it all just to ‘fit in.'
       Through it all, Katherine and Mac fight to keep their love intact as she tries to start a new life and Mac struggles to find the murderer against Katherine's wishes.