Randy Roeder

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the long, hot summer of 1968 ... Beneath the city's air of middle class respectability, problems abound. Corruption plagues the police department, the younger set has discovered drugs, and black and white don’t like each other very much. Cletus Efferding, a haberdasher and ballroom dancer, has just put his life back together when all hell breaks loose. A woman's body is found in an abandoned car, and Clete becomes prime suspect in a murder case.

"A man ain't lived until he's been investigated for something." On his first real vacation in over a decade, Cletus Efferding finds himself entangled in a web of deceit going back nearly a century when a down-and-out fisherman discovers an ornate antique coffin on a sandbar south of his hometown. Though the fisherman's discovery and a lucky buy at an estate auction make for pleasant holiday diversions, Clete learns the town's citizens wish he had never returned, and the sole surviving adult in his family hates him. Things go from bad to worse when a pair of semi-retired hitmen show up, leading officials to believe he is involved in a horrific murder. Caught up in a network of lies and unable to make sense of a cold-blooded killing, Efferding realizes he is a marked man and just might need the cemetery plot his parents bought for him. You can't go home again. Wise words, but Cletus never expected to find himself trapped between a psychopathic killer and a murder charge—shouldering the heavy burden of his family's sins of omission.