Hollis Vance is the boy nobody watches. In Sourwood, that is how you stay alive. His family is poor, his prospects are worse, and the only thing he owns that matters is a secret he has never said out loud. Doctor Crowe gives him a way out. A place with the Sevenfold Order, a Method to learn, medicine for his body, and a wage he can send home. The doctor is patient, kind when kindness costs him nothing, and always exact about what he wants. Hollis tells himself he can keep the two of them separate: the obedient initiate and the thing he is hiding. Then he meets Ellis "Tiger" Malloy, who is dying by inches and paying for it with a signed promise. Hollis saves his life once, and the debt between them becomes a rope with two ends. Hollis wants to climb. Crowe wants the truth. Tiger wants tomorrow. And every kindness in the Order comes with a ledger. I wrote this for readers who like tension that lives in a glance, a bargain, and a hand held too long.