In South Carolina a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. Its a case that nobody wants to touch a case with its roots in old evil and old evil is private detective Charlie Parkers speciality. But Parker is about to make a descent into the abyss a confrontation with dark forces that threaten all that Parker holds dear: his lover his unborn child even his soul. . . For in a prison cell a fanatical preacher is about to take his revenge on Charlie Parker its instruments the very men that Parker is hunting and a strange hunched figure that keeps its own secrets buried by a riverbank: the undiscovered killer Cyrus Nairn. Soon all of these figures will face a final reckoning in southern swamps and northern forests in distant locations linked by a single thread a place where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road.