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From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller DEVIL IN THE GROVE, a gripping story of sex, race, class, corruption, and the arc of justice twisted and bent straight again in the Florida citrus groves. In December 1957, which brings a rare killing freeze to Florida's orange groves, Blanche Bosanquet Knowles, the wealthy young wife of a citrus baron, is raped in her home while her husband is away. She says a "husky Negro" did it, and Lake County's infamously racist sheriff, Willis McCall, has no hesitation in rounding up a herd of suspects matching that description. But within days all are released without explanation, and just as inexplicably, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle white nineteen-year-old with the mental capacity of a ten-year-old.