It's 1928, and Jesse Sutherlin now has his own family and has made a success at the sawmill below Virginia's Buffalo Mountain working for JG Edwards. The country's economy is booming. And then David Privette, the sheriff who succeeded Dalton P. Franklin with whom Jesse had a run-in or two in COPPER KETTLE, arrives with surprising news --- the body of Jesse's father has just been discovered in the pit at Smith's West Oxford Street ice house operation. How could this be? In 1918, a man had brought the family the news that Sutherlin, Sr., had died of the Spanish flu while seeking work up in Norfolk, Virginia. Sheriff Privette doesn't take a deep interest in this cold crime, but Jesse is not letting it go.

Jesse Sutherlin has returned to Buffalo Mountain a war hero, after having survived the trenches of World War I. His cousin and fellow soldier, Solomon McAdoo, was less fortunate in his war service. He's suffering from shell shock. One day, up on the mountain while tending to a family moonshine still owned by Big Tom McAdoo, he's shot in the back. When Jesse hears this, he knows violence is going to boil up. The west side of the mountain is McAdoo territory, while the east side belongs to the Lebruns. The dispute ignited by Solomon's murder will be like the feud between the West Virginia Hatfields and McCoys, with no winners, only more dead men. Jesse decides to head off the violence by investigating the crime.

Following a recent rash of deaths and dismembered body parts appearing in Botswana’s Chobe Game Park, District Superintendent Sanderson is alerted to the discovery of a ravaged human skull, believed to be the work of the Russian Bratva. Led by Oleg Lenka, these mafiosi think it will be a cinch to take over the region’s high-end tourist trade --- in particular, the casino/hotel operation that is the fiercely held, final dream of American billionaire Leo Painter. Sanderson’s friend and lover, Inspector Kgabo Modise of the Botswana Police Service, is tasked to remove them. Modise is quickly swept into a complex set of moves orchestrated to outwit not so much Lenka, but his mistress Irena Davidova, the Bratva’s own Danger Woman.