To most people, a call in the middle of the night means family trouble. But Helen Black's family disowned her years ago. But the call is indeed from Helen's family. Great Aunt Ruth has passed on, and, inexplicably, left Helen her house. And so Helen journeys from Berkeley, from partner Frieda, to return to her roots in Mississippi. To look once more into the face of the father who repudiated her. Into the face of the woman who was her childhood sweetheart and is now a cop. But Helen finds far more than she could ever imagine. A dying grandfather, and small town secrets, one of them contained in the very house that is now hers. She finds murder, and submerged intrigue that harkens all the way back to a deeply stained period of history in the American south.