Ike Randolph has spent fifteen years building a quiet, law-abiding life. A Black ex-convict who now runs a successful lawn-care business in rural Virginia, he has stayed clean since prison — so when police appear at his door, his first instinct is fear. The news they bring is worse than anything he imagined: his son Isiah has been murdered, gunned down alongside Isiah's white husband, Derek.
Both fathers failed their sons in the same way. Ike could never fully accept that his boy was gay; Buddy Lee, Derek's father, was ashamed of him too. Now the two grieving, hardened ex-cons — who have nothing in common but their criminal pasts and their dead children — set out together to find the killers the police won't pursue. As their hunt turns bloody, they are forced to reckon with their own prejudice, their failures as fathers, and the men their sons actually were.
S.A. Cosby's ferocious, propulsive thriller is a story of vengeance and grief that doubles as an unflinching look at race, masculinity, and homophobia in the American South — brutal, moving, and impossible to put down.