In 1970, Willie Traynor came to Clanton, Mississippi, in a Triumph Spitfire and a fog of vague ambitions. Within a year, the twenty-three-year-old found himself the owner of Ford County's only newspaper, famous for its well-crafted obituaries.While the rest of America was in the grips of turmoil, Clanton lived on the edge of another age--until the brutal murder of a young mother rocked the town and thrust Willie into the center of a storm.