A gripping period crime story, this book incorporates actual events and real places. The author has crafted a completely original thriller that pays homage to Raymond Chandler's gritty detective stories and John Dos Passos's evocative U.S.A. trilogy. This book is filled with complex characters, passion, greed, fear, and grief, yet buoyed by an undercurrent of hope and humanity. Rattled by the gruesome accidental death of a co-worker, Slip Wilson quits his job at a logging camp, and decides to make a clean start in Seattle. But along the way, he rescues a woman and her young niece from their car in the ditch, and his life takes a hard turn. The woman, Ellie Hobbes, is an archist with big dreams. But first, she has to take care of that pesky dead body in the trunk of her car.