An old convict returns to Troy and sends Brady’s newsroom into chaos

As he was driven to Angola, Cory Wilde prayed his torment was just a dream. But the murder was real, and so was his sentence: twenty-nine years working the sugar cane fields in one of the nation’s cruelest prisons. When he is finally released, he is an old man, drained of every drop of life that once made him such a terror, but his name still has the power to make the people sweat in Troy, Louisiana.

At first Pete Brady, the new owner of the town’s weekly newspaper, doesn’t understand why his readers are so afraid of this broken old man. The original case against Wilde, whose life was spared despite the fact that he committed a capital crime, raises questions Brady cannot answer. Chasing this story could mean a lynch mob whose sights are set not just on the old man, but on Brady himself.