Delpha Wade killed a man who was raping her. Now, after fourteen years in prison nobody's rushing to hire a parolee. But persistence and smarts land her a secretarial job with with an ex-roughneck turned private eye.

1959. Delpha Wade killed a man who was raping her; the second man got away. After fourteen years in prison, she's out. It's 1973, and though no one wants to hire a parolee, she lands a secretarial job with Tom Phelan, an ex-roughneck turned neophyte private eye. Together these two pry into the dark corners of Beaumont, a blue-collar, Cajun-influenced town dominated by Big Oil. A mysterious client plots mayhem against a small petrochemical company; searching for a teenage boy, Phelan uncovers the lair of a serial killer. And Delpha looks into the eyes of her rapist, the one who got away.