She looked at the rotting, sun-blasted shack, the one room where they all lived, slept, made love, died. Looked at the dusty lawn where no grass grew. At the steaming swamp, at her tobacco-spitting mother. Saw the sly, lustful eyes of her father’s friends. Then she looked at her own lush beauty. Get me out of here, she prayed. Oh, please get me out of here! I’ll pay any price.
It’s giving nothing away in the form of a spoiler to report that this is a story of theft, murder, betrayal and pursuit. Readers of the Fawcett Gold Medal edition will realize that by the fourth page, which is the end of the first chapter.
We learn in a flashback that after his fiancée was killed in an automobile accident, Lee Sullivan was a man …