This is a memoir set in a mystery. Molly grew up in Mississippi, in the transitional south where blacks were "free" in name, but still treated as inferior property by the white families. During this period of her life, Molly was faced with a father who returned from the war to find a growing independence in the black soldiers who had fought side by side in the conflicts across the globe. They had been given a chance to be equal and they were not about to go back on this.
Molly's father caught between his writing, the culture of his old and landed family, and a marriage that was coming apart turned to drink and began a downward spiral that would affect Molly and her siblings, but as she began to put together her family history an old buried skeleton emerges - the death of two black men - shot by her father and his two brothers.
It is an incident that was buried behind the current of threat in the black community because anything that might look like retaliation could cause more death and damage to them and behind the law of the south where the white defendants never went to trial and the news was suppressed.
This incident brings the author in contact with the black families, musty old records, and minimum help from her own family who feel she is just causing trouble.
Through this she investigates the mores of the old south, the changing times, the possibility that one of the victims might have been a 1/2 brother of her dad, and the involvement of her grandmother in the cover up.
As she goes back and forth to her old home she peals off layers of recent history and the life time between WWII and civil rights. She also begins to realize that, though unpunished, the act that was committed may have been at the root of families dysfunction and divorce.
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