Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he’s a little slowand maybe boring, but that’s the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his ‘sickness’. It nearly got him put awaywhen he was younger, but his adopted brother took the rap for that. But now the sickness that has been lying dormant for a while is about tosurface again and the consequences are brutal and devastating.