A man reflects on the summer of his fourteenth year, where in Baton Rouge he fell in love with a golden-haired girl across the street before an unspeakable crime shattered illusions in his seemingly idyllic neighborhood.

growing up in the heart of Cajun country, the only family Ruby Landry has ever known are her loving ghuardian Jack, a drunken outcast who lives alone in a shack in the swamp.

Photographer Jeremy Bishop travels back to a Louisiana for his father's funeral. He finds himself in ways he never imagined in the graveyard, in a stranger's appearance at the wake, in a suicide and a murder, and, finally, inside a cardboard box that had belonged to his father. Slowly he weaves the past and the present, exploring the covenants made between parents and children, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers--Cover.

"The adopted daughter of the most powerful man in town, Schuyler Crandall left Heaven, Louisiana, a brokenhearted girl. Now a crisis has brought her home to a family in conflict, a logging empire on the brink of disaster, and seething secrets that make Heaven hotter than hell. Still there are her beautiful younger sister, Tricia, with her cruel lies-- Ken, Tricia's handsome husband, who married the wrong sister, Jigger, the pimp and ruffian with plans...