A few months after Alex Cross hunted a vicious killer named The Tiger halfway around the world, he began to think seriously about a book he had been wanting to write for years. It is a story his grandmother had told him - a story that has always stayed with him - about what took place in the early part of the Twentieth Century in Mississippi, during the time that Theodore Roosevelt was President. It is a story that Alex Cross believes helps illuminate why so many black people are angry, hurt, and lost, even today. At it's heart is Ben Corbett, a smart and courageous lawyer handed a mission by the President which will take him back to his hometown and into the heart of a series of murders and violent attacks, where the Ku Klux Klan play their part and where a community is being torn apart. Alex Cross has dealt with some terrifying cases in the past but this is a part of history that he wants to tell the world.