Sometimes the price of justice is a good man’s
soul.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of
the Natchez Burning trilogy returns with an electrifying
tale of friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that
threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town.
When Marshall McEwan left his Mississippi hometown at
eighteen, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove
him away spurred him to become one of the most successful
journalists in Washington, DC. But as the ascendancy of a
chaotic administration lifts him from print fame to
television stardom, Marshall discovers that his father is
terminally ill, and he must return home to face the
unfinished business of his past.
On arrival, he finds Bienville, Mississippi very much
changed. His family’s 150-year-old newspaper is failing;
and Jet Turner, the love of his youth, has married into the
family of Max Matheson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs
who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker
Club. To Marshall’s surprise, the Poker Club has taken a
town on the brink of extinction and offered it salvation, in
the form of a billion-dollar Chinese paper mill. But on the
verge of the deal being consummated, two murders rock
Bienville to its core, threatening far more than the city’s
economic future.
An experienced journalist, Marshall has seen firsthand how
the corrosive power of money and politics can sabotage
investigations. Joining forces with his former lover—who
through her husband has access to the secrets of the Poker
Club—Marshall begins digging for the truth behind those
murders. But he and Jet soon discover that the soil of
Mississippi is a minefield where explosive secrets can
destroy far more than injustice. The South is a land where
everyone hides truths: of blood and children, of love and
shame, of hate and murder—of damnation and redemption. The
Poker Club’s secret reaches all the way to Washington, D.C.,
and could shake the foundations of the U.S. Senate. But by
the time Marshall grasps the long-buried truth about his own
history, he would give almost anything not to have to face it.