This novel is an uplifting, multilayered portrait of a group of individuals, most of whom are new to the Louisiana river road community. There’s the “passing” African-American beauty in search of a fair shake. There are the underpaid, underprivileged construction workers. There’s their greedy boss and his conniving architect. Add to that the lonely, regret-filled Cuban who’s lost all that ever mattered and the feisty, seemingly silly sixty-two year-old who quibbles with a husband who’s gambling on the sly while they’re building a home in the tiny historic town, and the pot begins to boil. Personal, social, and ethical concerns arise. Ripe with both the quaintness and strangeness of the river road, the story is essentially a mystery about why a state legislator and doctor – antecedent, too, of the passing African-American -- was killed in a duel where the friend he’d chosen for a second insisted on the second shot that killed him. Just as mysterious is the doctor’s wife who, playing organ in the church in front of which the duel took place, finished Mass though told her husband was dying. Based on a real-life 1874 duel in St. James Parish, this tender, moving story is about race, guilt, and history.