In 1889, people are dying in Three Rivers, Virginia in gruesome ways, and lazy but erudite Sheriff, Maxwell Blount, will have to solve the cases, including one behind the walls of his very own jail where a man has been flayed alive while the sheriff and his deputy slept only twenty feet away.

Sheriff Blount, aided by his dime-novel loving deputy, will have to uncover long-buried town secrets hidden by both a controversial school and a powerful local family if he hopes to solve the mystery and live to tell about it.