St. Louis, 1926 · A novel
The Wrong Sin
The Story of a Sin Eater
Odile Roux is paid to swallow the sins of the dead. One night she swallows a murder.
I am what is known as a Sin Eater by trade, and one rule matters: you must be told the sin and whose it is.
Chapter one · the first line
The book
St. Louis, 1926. When a family can't bury a man clean, they send for a sin eater — a stranger who takes what the dead man did onto herself, for a fee, and is never spoken to again. Odile has done it for ten years without once being lied to. Then a frightened politician pays her for a sin he won't name, and is shot dead through her window before she's finished.
Now it's inside her. It won't come out. It's killing her — and it's the one thing the men who run the city can't let die with her.
The two of them
Odile Roux
A sin eater in the Valley. She has done it for ten years without once being lied to.
Julian Kerr
Gloved, courteous, under contract to put his hands on her once a week and report what he finds.
The audiobook
The whole book, wherever you listen
Open thewrongsin.com/listen on your phone or your computer and sign in with your email. The book keeps your place, chapter by chapter, and picks it up on any device you sign in on. On a phone it installs like an app.
Hear the opening
The first minutes of chapter one. Narrated by a synthetic voice.
A duology
Book One of two
The Wrong Sin is Book One. The story concludes in The Fourth Clause.