Lew Griffin is a survivor, a black man in New Orleans, a detective, a teacher, a writer. Having spent years finding others, he has lost his son-and himself in the process. Now, a derelict has appeared in a New Orleans hospital claiming to be Lewis Griffin and displaying a copy of one of Lew's novels. It is the beginning of a quest that will take Griffin into his own past while he tries to deal in the present with a search for three missing young men. Somewhere in the underbelly of the Crescent City there are answers and more questions, there are threats and the promise of salvation, and there is a dangerous descent into the alcoholic haze that marked Griffin's younger days, as well as the possibility of rising from it redeemed.