After watching a taped interview with Rona Leigh Glueck, a convicted ax-murderer who will be the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War, FBI investigator Poppy Rice discovers something that causes her to reopen the investigation.
Traces the author's experiences of growing up in a small-town community under the shadows of a severely autistic brother and a violent serial pedophile who eventually murdered one of the writer's young classmates.