October 1962, and a young newspaper reporter, Hilliard Cooper, returns to his racially tense home town of Allston, South Carolina to find out who set off the midnight explosion that killed his childhood best friend, Charlotte Ravenel. By the time he learns the truth, three other people have been killed, and he might be next. Decades later, as South Carolinians argue about the Confederate flag that still defiantly flies at the state Capitol, Hill Cooper remembers that October and realizes that "Charlotte was another tragic victim of our tragic history, an innocent and unintended casualty of a...