June, 1968. The country is disintegrating into a chaos of racial strife, urban uprising, assassination and violent protest against the Vietnam War. When the mutilated body of a young Puerto Rican woman is discovered by a small boy on the shore of a white, conservative, working-class New Jersey town, Police Captain Timothy Clarke and twenty-five-year-old Officer Kevin MacDougall race to identify the murderer in a town with no shortage of suspects.
Among them: the less-than-truthful boyfriend of the deceased, a crusading young priest with contempt for authority, the frustrated father of the boy who discovered the body, a bigoted widow yearning for the past, a battle-fatigued Vietnam veteran, or his sister and provider who holds a secret of her own.
A second body is discovered, that of a butchered white woman, and the citizenry is primed for chaos. Why, they demand, do the police seem so preoccupied with solving the death of a minority rather than protecting the town’s white majority? Officer MacDougall is forced to reevaluate what has always been the norm as he investigates the words and motivations of people he has looked up to his entire life.
Its violent past has finally caught up to the Aldritch family. Despite incredible wealth, influence, and community respect, decades-old secrets threaten to destroy the family and the lives of each of its members.
Eric, the only son. Intelligent, talented, devoted, has chosen a life of self-hate and destruction, unable to forgive himself for what he has done, and what he failed to do.
Geri, his younger sister. Beautiful, brash, envied by women and desired by men. What is behind her compulsion to damage and humiliate those close to her?
Michelle, the matriarch. Events triggering the long-ago accident killing Eric and Geri’s father and confining her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life are forced to the light, as well as her heartrending sacrifice of that long-ago night.
