"Mosher's tale of racism and murder is powerful, viscerally affecting and totally contemporary in its exposure of deep-seated prejudice and intolerance. In this big, old-fashioned novel, the calm of Kingdom County is shattered when a high-spirited French-Canadian runaway is shot to death, and the black Presbyterian minister in whose home she took refuge is charged with killing her to conceal the alleged fact that he made her pregnant. Narrator Jim Kinneson, a high schooler whose tough dad runs the local newspaper, is almost painfully naive about racism.... But Walt Andrews, the wry, articulate minister, an ex-Olympic athlete and widower, is one of the most believable characters in recent memory, and the courtroom trial, which runs for nearly 100 pages, is highly dramatic. To get Andrews off the hook, Jim's inexperienced lawyer-brother must find the real murderer. A related puzzle, which involves a skeleton in the Kinneson family closet, pulls the loose ends together."—Publishers Weekly