1974. Back from Vietnam, John Gaines has accepted the position of sheriff in Whytesburg, Mississippi. A quiet little town until the day the body of a teenage girl is discovered buried on the riverbank. The shock is immense: she is none other than Nancy Denton, a young girl who mysteriously disappeared twenty years earlier, her body preserved by the mud. The autopsy reveals that her heart is missing, replaced by a basket containing the remains of a snake. Traumatized by Vietnam, that atrocious war whose end "only the dead saw," John must once again confront horror. He will thus return to the fight, a singular fight this time, for it is true that a single body can be even more disturbing than hundreds. A fight waged for a murdered teenager and a heartbroken mother, a fight against the secrets and hidden truths of his quiet little town. If conducting an investigation twenty years after the crime seems a perilous undertaking, it is nothing compared to what awaits John: another journey through the nine circles of hell.
