The clock never worked right. The story never quite went away.

When Ada Ward returns to Arkansas City after her grandmother's death, she expects to inherit a quiet house and a quieter life. Instead, she finds a sealed envelope, a name whispered through generations, and a courthouse tower whose broken clock has marked more than just the hour?it's kept the memory of a man lost to history.

In 1910, a fire destroyed the Red Oak Hotel. Within days, a Black farmhand named Willard was tried and hanged?his innocence dismissed, his name forgotten, and the courthouse clock stopped cold at the moment of his death.

More than a century later, the clock still doesn't keep time. But it remembers.

As Ada uncovers a trail of buried records, ghost stories, and whispered warnings, she's pulled deeper into a mystery the town has tried to forget. What really happened in Desha County that summer? Why did her grandmother spend her final years chasing shadows? And why does the courthouse seem to be watching?

Inspired by real folklore and the strange truths of small-town memory, The Clocktower of Desha County is a Southern Gothic mystery about injustice, legacy, and what it means when time refuses to let go.