It’s 1961 in Tennessee and the sheriff says Lucy Cutler stripped off her clothes to go swimming in the Caney River and was attacked by a horde of copperheads. But she was a modest lady, the water where her clothes were found is too swift for swimming, and copperheads aren’t water snakes. Deputy sheriff Johnny Lee Cole is investigating but he’s distracted by the pure country sweetness of a strange woman who grew up in a snake-handling church and is married to an ex-con who hates lawmen. Meanwhile other women get snakebitten and armed men demand he stop a bus carrying freedom riders on their way to the deep south—and they’ll do it if he won’t. Deputy Cole is game, but he can’t win ’em all.

 

Genre Crime/Mystery Books