"A searing novel about the cracks that form in a small North Carolina community and the evils that unfurl from its center. Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger. Meanwhile, local deputies find a man sleeping in the back of a station wagon and believe him to be nothing more than some slack-jawed drifter. Yet a search of the man's vehicle reveals that he is a high-ranking member of the Klan, and the uncovering of a notebook filled with local names threatens to turn the mountain on end. After two horrific crimes split the county apart, every soul must wrestle with deep and unspoken secrets that stretch back for generations. Richly drawn and bracingly honest, Those We Thought We Knew reckons with an urgent, essential question: What do you do when everything you ever believed crumbles away?" -- Publisher description.