When she hears that her younger brother Danny has committed
suicide, Sayre Lynch relents from her vow never to return
to Destiny, the small Louisiana town in which she grew up.
She plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but
instead soon finds herself drawn into the web cast by Huff
Hoyle, her controlling and tyrannical father, the man who
owns the town's sole industry, an iron foundry, and in
effect runs the lives of everyone who lives there.
As she feared, Sayre learns that nothing has changed. Her
father and older brother, Chris, are as devious as ever,
and now they have a new partner-in-crime, a canny and
disarming lawyer named Beck Merchant, who appears to be
their equal in corruption.
Soon, Sayre is thrown in closer contact with Beck and
becomes convinced that something more sinister is at play
than her father's usual need to dominate people and events.
As she sets out to learn just what did happen to Danny, she
comes to realize that there are many secrets in Destiny --
secrets that hide decades of pain and anger, and that
threaten at any moment to erupt and destroy not only her
father and brother, but perhaps Sayre herself.
Underneath the rigid control that the Hoyles exert over the
town, trouble is brewing. Old hatreds foster plans for
revenge, past crimes resurface, and a maverick deputy
sheriff determines that Danny Hoyle's death was not
suicide, but murder.
As tensions mount, threatening to ignite a powder keg of
long-held hostility, Sayre finds herself inextricably drawn
into a struggle with striking laborers, her unscrupulous
father, and her own emotions over the love/hate
relationship that is growing with Beck, a man apparently
with his own agenda, and mysteries of his own.
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