Smashing way to set a story--hope they go on

Splintered Silence
by Susan Furlong

Pile on the pain!  Ex-Marine Brynn returns from her tour of duty as one severely screwed up soldier with only two things going for her--a corpse-sniffing dog and an ever-loving grandmother. Her flashbacks and panic attacks and habit of mixing prescription painkillers with liquor has kept her from holding down a civilian job, so she goes to visit her Gram in Bone Gap, Tennessee.

I spent the first part of the book cringing at her flashbacks and wondering if the "Irish Travelers" were a real thing or something the author had made up. But no--they're real. According to Slate magazine,

Irish Travelers, also known as "White Gypsies," are members of a nomadic ethnic group of uncertain origin. Scholars often speculate that they are descended from a race of pre-Celtic minstrels and that their ranks were swelled by displaced farmers during Oliver Cromwell's bloody campaigns of the mid-1600s. Travelers once roamed from town to town in horse-drawn carts, earning their keep by busking and tinsmithing; because of the latter vocation, they were nicknamed "Tinkers," a word that's now considered something of a slur.
A few Irish Travelers emigrated to America during the Potato Famine of the mid-19th century. Their 7,000-10,000 descendants still speak the secret Traveler language, a dialect alternately known as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant, which includes elements of Irish Gaelic, English, Greek, and Hebrew. They are also devout Roman Catholics who rarely marry outside the group.

Just when you thought you knew it all, huh?  I finished the book before I looked this up, but if I'd known it beforehand I'd have liked the book even more than I did. Which is saying a lot, because I loved this book. She's populated her imaginary world well--a priest who used to be Brynn's love interest, a hot next-door neighbor ex-con, and the only honest, nonjudgemental cop she's ever met, Sherriff Pusser--

His eyes were dark, deep set, almost hidden under his fat, pockmarked cheeks.

She doesn't like him and doesn't trust him, or any member of the outside world-- 'muskers'--but it's just possible she's going to end up working with him on another case. I'll be there to see.