After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and fires a shot, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. To dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, a reporter heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who bring a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims—an honorable man who had been handed the task of protecting the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana from the unjust world in which they lived. And in this final novel by the author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning.