The Body Behind the Little White Church

A 25-year-old woman goes missing for eight days. When her body is finally found, a tiny Appalachian town is rocked by shocking secrets of infidelity, polygamy and murder.

Illustrations by Marian Gast

Summer was found in a drain.

The tank was just behind the Faith Tabernacle Church of Logan, Ohio, along the Hocking River, where, after the discovery of the 25-year-old’s body, a makeshift memorial was set up: plastic flowers, teddy bears, candles.

But because Summer Inman died, because her body was found, just a few short weeks before Easter in 2011, the tokens left for her were placed beneath a six-foot wooden cross, the size and shape of a man holding out his arms.

Soon at the Faith Tabernacle Church would be the Easter sermon, all dawn and restoration. We who believe in such things, though I am not sure I count myself among them, were supposed to be celebrating life, re-birth, spring. And here was this woman facedown in the cold, wet dark, waiting for her absence to matter.