Part of Dave Robicheaux, book 14
First published 2006
Dave Robicheaux visits Troy Bordelon in Baptist Hospital. The dying man wants to confess his sins before death takes him. Bordelon has plenty to answer for as a lifelong bully and sadist, but he chooses to reveal something else. As a child, he witnessed a young prostitute tied to a chair in his uncle's house, bloodied and beaten. The confession takes Dave back to the summer of 1958. Fresh out of high school, he and his half-brother Jimmie worked for an oil company along the Louisiana-Texas coast. They laid rubber cables through bays and swamps thick with mosquitoes. On the Fourth of July, everything changed when Ida Durbin appeared. The sweet-faced young woman played mandolin and sang with a beautiful voice. Jimmie fell for her instantly, but Ida belonged to Kale, a brutal man who controlled her. She planned to escape, and Jimmie agreed to meet her at the bus depot for a run to Mexico. Ida never came. Now Bordelon's deathbed revelation connects to that long-ago summer and the girl who vanished.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful
Tropes: deathbed-confession, missing-person, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Baptist Hospital, Louisiana, Mexico, Texas
Period: 1958, Fourth of July
325 pages · Mass Market Paperback · PocketBooks
Content warnings: abuse, trafficking, violence