By October, 1967, The Summer of Love is history, rock and roll is dark and revolutionary, and people in the small East Texas community of Center Springs want only a quiet life. Unluckily, two years earlier, Anthony Agrioli met newlyweds Cody and Norma Faye Parker in a Vegas casino and heard their enthusiastic descriptions of Center Springs as the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. Now handsome hit man Agrioli and a blonde bombshell full of surprises need a place to hide out and, if possible, duck retribution from his Las Vegas crime boss. Thirteen-year-old Top Parker has what his grandmother, Miss Becky, calls a Poisoned Gift. His dreams, though random and disconnected, always seem to come true. This time Top dreams he s a wagon wheel hub with spokes converging from all directions. To him, the spokes symbolize that something is coming. And it is Center Springs will soon become a combat zone when a squad of gangsters arrives. Oddly, they re after something else. Not Agrioli yet. Add a sheriff crooked as a dog s hind leg, an unsolved murder in the river bottoms, counterfeit money, and a bank robbery to this country-noir Shakespearian comedy, cast it with Wortham s real and sometimes wacky characters including a constable and a judge, and the outcomes become unpredictable."