The setting for this intriguing tale of political corruption, murder, and a trial lawyer's devotion to duty is fictional St. Claire City, a small Mississippi town located between Natchez and Baton Rouge. A hundred years earlier, St Claire City had been a river port alongside the Mississippi River but changes in the course of the mighty "Father of Waters" left the once-thriving port city to virtually die on the vine and, today, among the massive oak and cypress trees, thickly laden with Spanish moss, not-so-well-kept antebellum homes, fronting hand-fired brick streets, stand as evidence of the town's past splendor. Jake Baker is in New Orleans on a short vacation with his wife, Bonnie, when an urgent telephone call is received from an old friend, Dumas McNeil, the editor of a small weekly newspaper in St. Claire City. Learning that Dumas is likely to be charged with the murder of the local County Attorney, Jake goes into action and the reader is taken along in and out of court as the Mississippi lawyer does his job. Aided by an investigator who is an old comrade from the Vietnam War, the lawyer, Jake, haunted by untold secrets from his own wartime experience, is required during the course of the saga to deal with a tangle of untruths and truths untold.