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 It is 2 a.m., summer 1956. Spooner Hays is facedown in a mud hole in front of the Delta County Courthouse in Texas, drowning in his own blood. Gray Boy Rivers is in a jail cell thirty yards away and four floors up when Spooner dies. Both are just out of high school. They were raised within ten miles of each other — worked together, played together, but lived in different worlds.
Ivory Hays, Spooner’s father, is called King Ivory because he is the self-appointed king of The Hollow, a bottomland area populated exclusively by people of color. He also wields considerable influence among whites. His son’s death causes ripples that turn into waves for this tiny rural county. The waves threaten to engulf the Rivers family.
Buster Galt, fresh from Dallas successes as both a prosecutor and defense lawyer, has returned to his Delta County roots with reluctant son Cameron and a reclusive wife. Buster soon follows in his father’s footsteps by winning election as district attorney. Rance Rivers and Buster Galt have old wounds that are mostly healed. Their sons, however, are making new ones. When Buster targets Gray Boy Rivers in his investigation of Spooner’s death, the tension between the two families theatens to become a blood feud.
Read an excerpt.
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