Pont Minou, Louisiana, where fields of sugarcane and tumble-down houses are laced by sodium-lit highways, crumbling river roads, and dusty oak drives. For world-weary Sheriff's deputy Bernadette Leblanc, this is both her beat and her hometown, and a railroad conglomerate's bid to buy up family homes and land by the acre brings long-simmering tensions bubbling to the surface. When Bernadette's secret lover Leslie, a public-interest lawyer defending the poor, turns up dead, she must decide whether to walk the line or take on her town's oldest and wealthiest family.