In the summer of 1962 young Dan Geary, a history professor from Chicago, embarks on a journey to reconstruct the life and mysterious death of a legendary blues artist, Virgil Thomas. His odyssey takes him from Chicago to Kansas City to St. Louis to Memphis to Helena, Arkansas, and then into the Mississippi Delta. In the South, he runs into the reality of the raging civil rights conflict. Sucked into that violent struggle, he will have to confront his own cowardice and his commitment to his principles. Along the way, Dan will find out what is really behind the disappearance of Virgil, and his many questions will be answered. Eventually he reaches the center of the mystery at Virgil's birthplace in Madden Falls, Mississippi. He will discover a crime beyond his imagination, and see for himself how a racist and twisted system can produce the ultimate evil, and even madness.