Having served two years for manslaughter in Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary, Iry Paret is headed to Montana. Now the war vet and blues singer hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. Unfortunately for Iry, the Riordan family's problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. Achieving a rare feat for a mystery novelist, James Lee Burke garnered a Pulitzer Prize nomination for this powerfully written 1986 novel.