In New Orleans' French Quarter, a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps -- runaway daughter of "trailer trash" -- that she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with a safe life for herself and her two daughters.
Butcher Boy, so dubbed by a horrified community in Minnesota following a 1970s murder spree, was released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south.
New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.
When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood. Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims' names change.
As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children's names will never be on that list.
In a major change of pace for the author, Nevada Barr tells a terrifying story of monstrous acts and redemption. Dan John Miller reads the story of a 12-year-old boy arrested for killing his family in 1971 and the 50-year-old New Orleanian he grows up to be--a man haunted by the demons still inside him. Miller's reading is delicately understated, giving a touching gentleness to the characters that makes the suspense all the more meaningful. Without overpowering the story with accents or stylistic vocal changes, Miller gives the characters a distinctive Louisiana flavor when appropriate. The story reaches a stunning climax as the damaged man finds love, and then watches as history begins to repeat itself. S.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Nevada Barr is the award-winning author of thirteen previous Anna Pigeon mysteries, including the New York Times bestsellers Hard Truth and High Country. She lives in New Orleans.
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