After a self-imposed exile in England, historian Gale Grayson has returned to her Southern roots, only to find eccentric relatives—and murderous scandal—alive and well in Statlers Cross, Georgia.
 
They’d been talking about Linnie Glynn Cane since 1925, about the pecan tree where she was found hanging, and how her ghost never came to rest. No sooner do Gale and her four-year-old, Katie Pru, arrive in town than tragedy strikes again. Martin Cane, a straitlaced, religious man and host of the annual Southern Gospel Singing and Barbecue, turns up dead—killed by a rifle blast—in the midst of the festivities. Now it is up to Gale to untangle the twisted facts behind Martin’s death. Was the motive suicide, greed, revenge—or a long-delayed justice? To find out, Gale will have to dig deep into the town’s darkest secrets and her own painful past.