Jack Callahan is an outsider in his adopted hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. A successful lawyer, he has spent years trying to move in all the right circles. But with his literary mother in a sanitarium, his society marriage on the rocks, and his biggest client --- Raleigh’s family-owned newspaper the Criterion --- facing a hostile takeover, he’s beginning to wonder if it’s really worth it. Step by step, readers are drawn into the “non-secret secrets” of an elite that wields power founded on intricate manners and unsolved crimes. Wall Street raider Victor Broman, Jack’s former client, is hell-bent to acquire the Criterion for shadowy patrons. Eventually, Jack takes counsel from his friend Lowry, a mysterious Native American mystic, who unveils a different path, away from all the right circles.