Augustus Gus Belmont was your typical commercial airline pilot. Late 40s, divorced with one kid, he lived life as he saw it. The only problem: he was dying. And, Gus was a Rat. Kristin Belmont was Gus's daughter--smart, beautiful, a college senior with the entire world ahead of her. She was not a Rat--though she could see and talk with ghosts. Gus faced his mortality with ticked off stoicism, but he really wanted closure for two 25-year-old mysteries: Why did his one true love disappear before their marriage? Was he guilty of causing another Rat's death? Shoes contains love, murder, mystery, ghosts, the Civil War and Vietnam, and a soupcon of the great military college, Virginia Military Institute with its Brother Rat Cadet Corps.