Benni Harper is coming home to Sugartree, Arkansas. The folk-art historian, ranchwoman, and unwitting detective of Earlene Fowler's Agatha Award-winning series is back in the Ozarks for Sugartree Baptist Church's Homecoming festivities. Benni's brought both her husband, Gabe, and her best friend, Elvia Aragon, from California for the occasion, which promises to be a celebration of the best of small-town Southern life. For Benni that will always carry "the memory of muggy Arkansas summer nights filled with the scent of sweet honeysuckle, fresh-mowed grass, and the taste of half-melted Dairy Queen chocolate sundaes."

But Benni's nostalgia is cut short abruptly when the worst of small-town Southern life rears its ugly head. Benni's childhood friend, Amen Tolliver, is running for mayor against incumbent Grady Hunter, whose son Toby--a fledgling white supremacist--will do anything to make sure a black woman doesn't win his father's office. When Toby is found with his head beaten in, and Amen's nephew Quinton becomes the prime suspect, Benni's idealism takes a backseat to curiosity--and to the painful consequences of exposing both the prejudices and the skeletons that Sugartree residents would prefer to keep deep in the closet