When Randle Marks buried his abusive father three years ago, he thought he had escaped the gravitational pull of his dysfunctional family. Living in Florida, Randle was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Now he’s served his time, written a book about his scientific work, and plans to marry his college sweetheart. Then his new beginnings are interrupted by his mother’s medical emergency.
He is summoned to his boyhood home of Augusta, Georgia to face long-suppressed memories, contemptuous siblings, and his dying mother’s desperate attempts to conceal her secrets and preserve her dignity. He battles dispassionate doctors who are reluctant to waste resources on a terminal patient and, in the process, discovers that his mother’s fate may not be an act of God. While investigating her medical situation, he uncovers conspiracies to hijack two estates—his mother’s modest estate, and that of a wealthy man who claims to be his birth father. To bury the past, he will have to learn the truth about the past.
Randle embarks on a journey through contemporary end-of-life rituals juxtaposed with 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 finds he must solve a murder no one knew had been committed. To do that, he will have to prevent the embezzlement of a stranger’s wealth, and solve the riddle of his own identity. When he learns the shocking truth, he is challenged to choose between greed, revenge and reconciliation.
“A precise, elaborate tale that shows just how menacing a family’s history can be.”
—Kirkus Reviews