While trying to run her father's newspaper, Irene Ingram investigates the death of one of her crime reporters who was chasing down a story about a Jewish shop owner who received a threatening message from a stranger.

"From an American master comes another "beautifully languid, emotionally intense tale" (Entertainment Weekly), this time of a newspaper editor's fateful decision to expose a small-town fugitive. Ned Ayres, the son of a judge in an Indiana town in midcentury America, has never wanted anything but a newspaper career--in his father's appalled view, a "junk business," a way of avoiding responsibility. The defining moment comes early, when Ned is city...