Sebastian Rudd is not your typical street lawyer. He works out of a customized bulletproof van, complete with Wi-Fi, a bar, a small fridge, fine leather chairs, a hidden gun compartment, and a heavily armed driver. He has no firm, no partners, no associates, and only one employee, his driver, who's also his bodyguard, law clerk, confidant, and golf caddy. He lives alone in a small but extremely safe penthouse apartment, and his primary piece of furniture...

"In sparsely populated George County, Mississippi, along a quiet dirt road lined by sharecropper houses, lies Chalktown, a small village of folks who communicate mostly through the chalkboards set up in the front yards of their houses. Down the road lives the Sheehand family: sixteen-year-old Hezekiah, his older sister, Arena, his mentally disabled younger brother, Yellababy, and their disaffected and often cruel mother, Susan Blair, whose husband...

Thirteen-year-old Cynnie has had to deal with her mother's alcoholism and stream of boyfriends all her life, but when her grandparents take custody of her brother, who has Down Syndrome, Cynnie becomes self-destructive and winds up in court-mandated Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

The lives of three troubled people--middle-aged schizophrenic Carrie, orphaned eighteen-year-old Will, and fourteen-year-old Kurt--intersect unexpectedly in this story told in alternating viewpoints.