To the people of New Iberia, Aaron Crown's ways are the stuff of "poor white piney-woods folklore." His family were shiftless timber people from north Louisiana who brought their ways into the Cajun wetlands: poaching deer, stealing livestock, trailing rumors of ties to the Ku Klux Klan. No one was surprised when Crown was accused of assassinating the most famous black civil rights leader in Louisiana. But it took twenty-eight years for the system to put him in Angola Penitentiary. Now, Crown is proclaiming his innocence - and asking Dave Robicheaux for help. Dave tries to stay removed from the political maelstrom swirling around Aaron Crown, but deep in his heart he worries that Crown has been made a scapegoat for the collective guilt of an entire generation. But when Buford LaRose - scion of an old Southern family and author of a book that sent Crown to prison - is elected governor, Dave Robicheaux's involvement with the case deepens to a level that threatens to overwhelm him. LaRose's wife, Karyn, is a social-climbing politician's wife, but years ago she and Dave were romantically involved. Now, when she once again turns her seductive powers on Dave, and her husband offers him a job as head of the state police, Dave knows that, somehow, he must find out the truth about Aaron Crown: a truth that too many people want hidden.