From the national-bestselling author: A "powerful, heartbreaking" tale of racial tensions and tragic violence in New Orleans--based on true events (Publishers Weekly). Thea Tamborella returns to New Orleans after a ten-year absence to find the city of her birth changed, still a place of deep contradictions, a sensuous blend of religion, tradition, bonhomie, and decadence, but now caught in a web of fear caused by bad economic times, crime, and racial unrest. Burgess Monroe is the drug kingpin of the Convent Street Housing Project. He has always known he would die young, and now he wants to use his wealth to do something for the poor people of the project where he grew up. Delzora Monroe, Burgess's mother, works as a housekeeper in the mansion on Convent Street that Thea inherits from her aunt. Zora loves her son, but she knows that he has used his life to do evil, and she mistrusts his motives. She fears the repercussions when an attraction develops between Thea and Burgess. The violence that results from the death of the lone cop has the city in the grips of fear. On both sides of Convent Street, the rich and the poor, that violence is about to be played out . . .