Sue Baumgardner never thought she would write a novel. That’s not to say she didn’t spin tales, which she started doing as a toddler, or write stories, a memoir, and even verses for greeting cards. So it’s not that she didn’t want to write; it’s just that life sometimes got in the way. That has all changed with the publication of Where Sin Increased, which Kirkus Reviews praises for its “detailed and sharp” prose and for a story that is “reminiscent, in some ways, of Maine’s best-known writer of dark tales, Stephen King.”

Before sitting down to write her first novel, Baumgardner worked as a music teacher and for the post office, retiring “as a postmaster out of Kentucky.” After returning to Maine (she now lives in Prospect), she found the opportunity to write full time. Baumgardner studied the craft, taking six semesters in adult education and signing up for seminars and writing retreats. She even studied under spymaster Mark Dawson and bestselling thriller author James Patterson before sitting down to write her first novel, a mystery that she says involves her “worst nightmare.”

The result is Where Sin Increased. Baumgardner plucked the title from a Bible verse, Romans 5:20, which reads in full, “Where sin increased, grace multiplied even more.” She feels that it reflects both the guiding principle for the book’s storyline as well as her own faith, which is woven into the novel. “I think that the title is more apt to attract the Christian reader,” she explains. “It is something biblical that they would recognize.” The story unfurls in the wake of the unsolved murder of a young girl and follows her family through the years, ultimately making the reader question their own ideas of redemption.

In 1958 in the fictional town of Winterhaven, Maine, 8-year-old Mary Sue is found dead. Her brother, 10-year old John Daniel, is the last known person to have seen her alive, and he’s not talking. When the case goes cold, private investigator Rocky O’Hara is hired by a distant, wealthy relative in hopes of tracking down the young girl’s killer.

Rocky is smitten with the small town, but the murder brings up painful memories for him, as he is fresh off a similar homicide case in Georgia. He is determined to bring Mary Sue’s killer to justice, but no one is talking. At the same time, the murderer is slowly working to find salvation from a higher power. As the story skips forward to the 21st century, readers may be able to guess the identity of the killer, but what happens on the page is not just a whodunit, but a portrait in faith and forgiveness. “[What] I tried to show in this book was that we are not all coming from the same place, mentally, spiritually, or even physically,” says Baumgardner. “The main theme of the book is to teach people not to judge someone, because we just don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Christian beliefs are key elements in the book and in its characters. “A moral code is important,” says Baumgardner. “And we’ve become quite blind to that.” It’s why many of Baumgardner’s tales require compassion and patience from the reader. “Religious overtones [are present in] all of my writing,” Baumgardner says. While she is a lifelong Catholic, she wasn’t aware that her faith was affecting her writing until she looked back at her still-growing body of work, which now includes six books. “I was surprised by that this last year when I was reviewing what I’d written,” she says. “I found it’s in everything.”

In Where Sin Increased, Baumgardner relies on that belief system to explain some of the characters’ motivations, creating an underlying structure to support their sometimes hard-to-explain actions. Like when one character walks into a thunderstorm despite her fear: “Losing fear of the storm just as he had predicted, she eventually found strength, hope even, in this display from an all-powerful God.” It’s in the final pages that the characters’ own faith is truly tested, and readers will either appreciate the divine intervention or yearn for earthly justice. Either way, it’s an ending to remember. 

In addition to faith-based elements running throughout the book, Baumgardner’s story is deeply imbued with a sense of place. For the fictional town of Winterhaven, Maine, Baumgardner draws on her knowledge of her home state to draft an evocative portrait:

The Maine Rock Lobster Stew, and Henry’s Down East accent…was an offer too rich to resist. It was over that breaking of bread, slurping of stew, and Rocky’s new, no-ink lease that the two men took each other’s measure and fell into an easy camaraderie. 

Other times [Rocky] would go down to the Riverboat Register and sit at the lunch counter and have a cup of coffee and a donut with Madge, the old lady who ran the joint. Madge tended the grill and cash register and pumped gas for anyone who didn’t pump their own. A tough old girl…chipped nails, no makeup….Madge should be pictured on a billboard, Rocky thought, a billboard that proclaimed, “Made in Maine.” 

While the story traces to the modern day, it starts in an earlier and simpler time that Baumgardner reflects in the story. “It very closely depicts the life that the country folk lived in the state of Maine in 1958,” says Baumgardner, who lived in a rural community similar to the one she portrays in the book.

Baumgardner’s love of Maine’s people, places, and stories is evident in her other works, too, including children’s books Jean-Alfred’s New Home and He Would Not Forget: Not Ever, which draw from Maine’s folklore. As Baumgardner says, “There’s no place like home.”

Melissa Locker is a freelance arts and culture writer in New York City.