Out of the murky backwaters of the Mississippi emerged the legend of Jack the Baptist. Jack Cowel, disgraced pastor and mad man, drowned his wife for bearing another man's child, luring her to the banks of the Mississippi through the ministration of holy baptism. In this cursed place Jack remained to torment her bastard son with ceaseless prayers, baptisms, and cruel punishments. By the end of Summer 1972, twenty years had passed since Cowel's blasphemy. Most local boys knew the wild stories of the craven lunatic in the woods, or the ghost of the sorrowful woman haunting the river; but, for Jim Fuller and his friends, the legend was real. The novel begins when, years after a near-fatal run-in with Jack, the group again finds itself within the Baptist's vengeful grasp. In the ensuing tribulations, they also discover Jack's all-too-real stepson, the haunted and lonesome Liam, a young man their own age. Both thriller and coming of age tale, the novel tells the story of Jim Fuller's mission to learn the whole truth about Liam, to navigate the muddy waters of manhood, and to confront his fears in the form of a final clash with Jack the Baptist.