When Cole Quick returns to his estranged hometown of Teller, Texas for his alcoholic father's funeral, it doesn't take long for old debts, both criminal and psychological, to drag him back into the underworld he fled thirteen years earlier.

Fresh off the death of his wife, a former local debutante who swore off her inheritance to skip town with him, Cole soon finds trouble from her family on the other side of the tracks as well.

To escape Teller County with his life intact he'll have to solve an old friend's murder, resist powerful forces conspiring to pillage his birthright, and crack open the debutante town's sterile shell to reveal the dark forces of racism, classism, and corruption operating just beneath the surface.