It’s 1963, in fact. June. All spring Freedom Riders have been advancing the cause of civil rights in the South, and even in the face of city commissioner “Bull” Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses demonstrators have marched through the segregated streets of Birmingham, Alabama. While no one’s marching in Black River Falls, Iowa, except maybe the high school band, the sleepy heartland town is showing signs of racial unease nonetheless. For the body of a black college student — David Leeds — has turned up dead. Close by him, in the woods just outside the town limits, lies a second victim: white; local photographer; shot twice in the face, apparently with the same weapon that got Leeds in the neck; also dead. The evidence points to blackmail, and to a scandal that could ruin the already encumbered campaign of the very white Senator Lloyd Williams for reelection, if photos exist to prove rumors that romantically link the senator’s daughter to the handsome, bright, ambitious and black — David Leeds. Prejudice runs mean and deep in Sam McCain’s hometown, as the amiable young attorney and sometime detective discovers in an investigation that takes him from the stench and suspicion of a local bikers’ club to the cliquey precincts of the martini-fortified rich.