It's 1951. The Thebes State Penal Farm in Mississippi is up a dark
river, surrounded by swamps and impenetrable piney woods. It's the Old
South at its most brutal--a place of violence, racial terror, and even
more horrific rumors. Of the few who make the journey, black or white,
even fewer return.
But in that year, two men will come to Thebes. The first is Sam Vincent,
the former prosecuting attorney of Polk County, Arkansas who, with great
misgivings, accepts a job to investigate a disappearance. Before he
leaves on this dangerous trip, he confesses his fears to his former
investigator Earl Swagger, now a sergeant of the Arkansas State Police.
Earl pledges that if Sam is not back by a certain time, he will come
looking for him.
What they encounter there is something beyond their wildest imagining of
evil. The dying black town is ruled by white deputies on horseback who
are more like an occupying army and the only escape is over the wild
currents of the dark river that drowns as many people as it liberates.
But nothing in town compares to the prison. Run by an aging madman with
insane theories of racial purity, it is administered by a brutal
sergeant known as Bigboy. The convicts call him The Whip Man--he can
take a man's soul with his nine feet of braided catgut.
Both Sam and Earl will be challenged to the limits of their strength by
this place and will struggle not only for their own survival, but with
the question: What does a man do when confronted with evil?
