On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals sightseeing in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker - witness to and reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy - is drawn once more into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice.

John Lane is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including My Paddle to the Sea; Begin with Rock, End with Water; and most recently Abandoned Quarry: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 2012 Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Award for Poetry. A professor of English and director of the Goodall Environmental Studies Center at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Lane is a 2014 inductee into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.