After a controversial shooting ends Raymond Saddler's LAPD career, he accepts a sheriff's position in the small town of Quinsett, believing that the isolated and sedate town will be the ideal place to rebuild his shattered life. Instead, he discovers a long-harbored secret, a dormant evil and an adversary, who may well be history's greatest villain...or most tortured and aggrieved victim. As Quinsett is plunged into a complex and savage nightmare of violence and death, Saddler quickly gleans that the facade of small town Americana is a shallow illusion. Though fifty years dead, the specter of Jeniah Lightcrusher continues to haunt the isolated town. The victim of a vigilante murder, the purported witch vowed vengeance against the offspring of those who took her life. As Saddler grapples with the mounting carnage, he begins to discern a pattern that suggests this oath of vengeance is not simply the stuff of urban myth, but a festering blood debt woven into the tapestry of the town. Haunted by the demons of his own inadequacy and confronted by an evil that defies logic, Raymond Saddler is unaware that the one he loves and trusts the most has ushered him into the Circle of the Witch."