Deep in North Carolina's Tarheel country, financier Jake Honeycutt dies of a shotgun blast while hunting. No one mentions to Kate, his grieving and pregnant wife from New York, that just maybe his death wasn't an accident. With the exception of Lacy, the farm's old curmudgeon of a handyman, everyone from the slow-talking local cop to Jake's slick attorney are as sweet as pecan pie. But when the body of a murdered stranger turns up and a snapshot of Sake with his Vietnam army buddies disappears, Kate begins to hear a sinister undertone. Now in a world of ante-bellum mansions, good ol' boys, and steel magnolia women, Kate realizes she is an outsider and in trouble, looking among Jake's kith and kin for a friend to count on . . or a killer to fear.