In this concluding volume to Greg Iles’ Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations --- preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son. The trial sets a terrible clock in motion, and unless Penn can pierce the veil of the past and exonerate his father, his family will be destroyed.