Coralee Harper struggles for justice for her dead brother and her own
sanity in Depression-era rural Arkansas.
In 1926 in rural Green County, Arkansas, where cotton and poverty reign,
young Coralee Harper hopes for a family and a place in her community,
but when her brother Buddy is killed by a powerful sheriff, she can't
recover from his death or the injustice of his loss. When she begins to
spot her dead brother around town, she wonders--is she clairvoyant,
mistaken, or is she losing her mind?
What Coralee can't fathom is that there are forces at work that threaten
her and the very fabric of the town: Leroy Harrison, a newly minted,
ambitious lawyer who makes a horrible mistake, landing him a judgeship
and a guilty conscience for life; an evangelical preacher and his flock
of snake-handling parishioners; the women of the town who, along with
Coralee's own mother, make up their own kind of jury for Coralee's
behavior; Sheriff Wiley Slocum who rules the entire field, harboring
dark secrets of his own; and finally, Coralee's husband Earl, who tries
to balance his work at the cotton gin with his fight for family and
Coralee's life.
When Coralee ends up in a sanity hearing before Judge Leroy Harrison,
the judge must decide both Coralee's fate and his own. The chain of
events following his decision draws him more deeply into the sheriff's
far-reaching sphere of influence, and reveals the destructive nature of
power, even--and especially--his own.
