When the yellow chrysanthemums began arriving at the Border Cafe, people began to wonder. Hermano, California is not the kind of town where people send bouquets to each other, and the Border Cafe is definitely not the kind of place. Always the same mysterious, unsigned, printed card: "Rosita from Cookie." So who is this Cookie? Only beautiful singer Rosita Montoya knows, and she isn't saying. Suddenly Rosita is murdered and the identity of "Cookie" takes on new importance, especially to John Rock, editor and publisher of the Hermano Weekly News, where Rosita had a day job. The former big-city journalist is determined to find the killer of this lovely young woman, but it is not a time or place where straight answers to straight questions come easily. A farm labor strike is tearing apart the little California Delta town. Rock is physically attacked by both sides of the strike. He is assaulted by the police during a riot in front of his newspaper office. There is gunfire in the vineyards and farmworkers' houses are torched, killing a mother and two children. A second girl is murdered, also a singer at the Border Cafe where Rosita performed on weekends. It all comes to a crashing climax in the back rooms of Rock's newspaper. The old dust-covered presses and typesetting machinery, relics of a bygone era, have one more vital role to play."