Robert "Rabbit" Haase, a new college graduate with a degree in law enforcement, is begged to return to Klosterberg, a small town in Rural Texas, to investigate the murder of a state trooper. Circumstantial evidence points to Fenton Rivers, the man who four years earlier murdered Rabbit's beautiful, black wife, almost killed him, and was acquitted on grounds of insanity. Back in Klosterberg, Rabbit is appointed the county's chief deputy sheriff. Peetie, his twelve-year-old black adopted daughter and budding computer ace, enrolls in the local school as a sixth grader. While Rabbit works to unravel a trail suggesting that Rivers is a link in an illlicit trade route stretching from the Mexican border to Chicago, Peetie encounters problems in school. Her classmate Baylee Ruthers, a troubled black child pampered for her beautiful singing voice, ridicules Peetie's beloved white adopted father. After a confrontation in which Peetie smashes Baylee's nose, the school psychiatrist vows to get the adoption rescinded. Peetie, frantic at the thought of losing her Rabbit-daddy, taps into the drug trade, seeking a way out. The consequences of her rashness ripple through the community and beyond, breaching racial lines in Klosterberg, reaching to the top directorate of the trans-national drug operation, and bringing state and federal forces to Klosterberg as Rabbit works desperately to save Peetie and his new-found love from Fenton Rivers' deranged hostility.