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It's 1954 down in Mississippi and Jack Branch has finally come home, taking a job as a high school teacher.

Until his son was kidnapped and murdered, George Gates was a globe-trotting travel writer. Now he writes boring articles by day and broods at night.

One day in 1952, the strangled body of 10-year-old Cathy Lake is discovered in a public park. A homeless suspect, Albert Jay Smalls, is arrested and held for interrogation.

A floundering middle-aged historian reluctantly sits down with the woman he suspects was responsible for his father's murder decades before.

Roy Slater is a young man who 25 years ago ran away from his hometown to escape the consequences of an unspeakable crime.

In 1937 a woman appears in Port Alma, a small sea village nestled on the chilly coast of Maine. Before a year goes by, she will flee Port Alma on the same bus that brought her there.

Cook's novel begins after the 9/11 attacks, when researcher Paul Crane sits down to interview elderly New York City resident Thomas Danforth.