Write Sorrow on the Bosom of the Earth

It is 1972, and Clay Dautry, a successful criminal attorney, has left Los Angeles under a cloud. He is returning to Southeastern Kentucky, to the coal country where he grew up, to unravel a family mystery. For months he's published a classified ad in a local newspaper. In it he seeks to learn why his father killed a man in 1929. Even before he arrives, people have begun to die. As he exits the train, Clay sees a mentally retarded black man in shackles. The man is Ortie, and he's shot a local businessman in a practical joke gone terribly awry. Ellen Reames, a young Kentucky attorney, stands beside Ortie as an angry crowd throws eggs.Clay and Ellen set out to solve two mysteries: how Ortie came to shoot a local restaurant owner, and why Clay's father killed a competing mine operator. Someone will murder to protect secrets hidden for forty years, and Clay and Ellen become targets of a deadly conspiracy.