Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother’s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave’s mind. He’s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss...

A Louisiana farmer is jailed for the murder, 30 years earlier of a black civil rights leader. The farmer claims he is innocent and asks Dave Robicheaux, the sheriff's deputy, to help him prove it. Not easy, as it suits a lot of people to have the case closed. By the author of Burning Angel.