Jim Henry Tate is a county constable in the virtually brand new cotton mill village of Boiling Springs, North Carolina. His job has been, he says, mostly to "just walk around and let people see they's some law in the lower part of the county." However, when the village's first ever murder occurs in 1908, things change. Jim Crow, always a village resident, struts through town cawing with feathers ruffled. For the murder victim is white and there is wide spread suspicion that the murderer is black. This means Jim Henry must not only solve a murder, he must deal with racial tension that threatens to boil over into a full-fledged race riot.