An eleven-year-old streetwise boy living in a small southern West Virginia coal town dodges death on a late stormy 1960 summer night. Moments from being murdered by a stranger in a chance meeting, the boy witnesses in terror a rescuer killing the assailant using the attacker's switchblade knife. The unknown rescuer disappears moments later leaving the boy as the only witness, a witness compelled to wonder about his own fate.
Unable to convince the police or his own mother of what happened, the boy tries to emotionally distance himself from both his brush with death and the haunting sight of a tall sinister stranger dying within an arm's reach of him. Little does he know that the event will spiral and change his life, ultimately demanding of him a guy-wrenching decision that no young child should have to make.
Entwined with warm sympathetic support roles as well as memorable demonic characters, the boy's summer of 1960 paints a woeful tale of goodness at its best and evil at its worst as human behavior is unmasked. Culminating in a climax that exposes hidden secrets of seemingly serene Justiceton, West Virginia, readers are left thirsting for more in this dark psychological thriller.