Home from Vietnam, Sandy Buford is introduced to a new South as he tries to solve the grisly murder of a hip-pocket lender sixty miles inland from Myrtle Beach. Deputy Buford forms an unlikely alliance with a skeletal priest/lawyer who dresses like he's still prosecuting unbelievers for the Inquisition, then proceeds to confront a second northern invasion, high drama in low-lying Bogside, a deadly ambush in a piney wood, and even a Black Mass at a house of ill-repute. It's almost more than the country folk can bear.

Award-winning author Paul A. Barra proves once again that mysteries can be literature too as he brings the Southland to life as it was a half-century ago. A former reporter for The Horry Independent in Conway and the senior staff writer for the Diocese of Charleston, Barra knows South Carolina.

Paul A. Barra has had eleven novels published, including 2024's Sgt. Ford's Widow from The Permanent Press. NPR called it "exceptional" and said, in part, "And the writing is so evocative you can hear the silence, feel the heat, sense the danger, anticipate the final joy."SFW is a finalist for a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.Barra was formerly a decorated naval officer, a teacher at Conway High School, a reporter for The Horry Independent, and the senior staff writer for the Diocese of Charleston. He knows South Carolina, an important center of culture in the antebellum South and an emerging area of population growth today.