If anyone knows Death, Penn Cage does. He, himself, has sent 16 men to their fate as District Attorney, and killed one by his own hand. And now his beautiful young wife is gone too, leaving him alone with their young daughter. He decides to go home; home means Natchez, Mississippi, and the ghosts of his past. There he stumbles over a long-forgotton crime - the death of a black man in '68 - which could explain not only his own life, but that of the whole community. A community which seems to have been playing the quiet game for the last 30 years...