Detective Dave Robicheaux is facing the most painful and dangerous case of his career. A troubled young woman breezes into his hometowns of New Iberia, Louisiana. She happens to be the daughter of Robicheaux's onetime best friend - a friend he witnessed gunned down in a bank robbery, a tragedy that forever changed Robicheaux's life.
The twists begin when Trish Klein - the only offspring of Robicheaux's Vietnam-era buddy - starts passing marked hundred-dollar bills in local casinos. Is she a good kid gone bad? A victim's child seeking revenge? A promiscuous beauty seducing everyone good within her grasp? And how does her behavior relate to the apparent suicide of another "good" girl, an ace student named Yvonne Darbonne, who apparently participated in a college fratorgy before her death?
Can Robicheaux make his peace with the demons that have haunted him since his friend's murder so many years ago? Can he figure out how a local mobster fits into all the schemes and deaths? Can Robicheaux's life be whole again when it has been shattered by so much tragedy?