A murder mystery tucked inside a Southern family drama complicated by a mother’s desperate struggle to conceal her explosive secrets.
Randle Marks buried his abusive father three years ago and thought he had escaped the gravitational pull of his dysfunctional family. Nonetheless, when he is summoned to his mother’s hospital bedside in Augusta, Georgia, he expects to face long-suppressed memories and contemptuous siblings, but he does not expect to find a man claiming to be his birth father, conspiracies to embezzle money, and a murder no one knew had been committed.
To learn the truth about his past, Randle embarks on a journey through Old South traditions and the fading mores of his mother’s generation to untangle the layers of lies that enshroud his family’s history. As he uncovers the twisted facts, Randle battles the medical establishment, solves the murder and grapples with the riddle of his own identity. Only then can he choose between revenge and reconciliation.
Winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award for Southern Fiction.
“A precise, elaborate tale that shows just how menacing a family’s history can be.”
—Kirkus Reviews