When nineteen-year-old Tina Rutherford goes missing, everyone in Chabot, Mississippi knows who is responsible. Twenty-five years earlier, young Cindy Walker also vanished without a trace after a date with the neighbor's son, Larry Ott. Larry was never convicted of the crime due to a lack of evidence, but he was shunned and lived in ritualized solitude. Now under suspicion again, his house becomes a target for drunken rednecks; he is shot, and young black constable Silas Jones is assigned the troublesome investigation—he shares a complicated past and a dark secret with Larry. Faulkner already knew that the past cannot be buried, and in Franklin's Southern novel about friendship, betrayal, and everyday racism, old wounds are reopened, revealing that fear and cowardice can lead to terrible mistakes.