Publisher's Synopsis
With war clouds on the horizon, life in the port city of Wilmington, North Carolina is nothing if not exciting. Ace reporter Coleman Blue revels in the hustle and bustle of the booming river town even as, like most whites, he chooses to ignore the ugliness of the slave trade on which so much of the Lower Cape Fear's wealth is predicated. But when a Yankee insurance detective presses Blue into an investigation of suspicious deaths of slaves owned by a long-time rival, Coleman Blue gets more excitement than he bargained for. On the eve of the Civil War, Coleman Blue is suddenly asking himself hard questions. The answers he finds will leave him fighting for his life.
