It's a particularly bad day in November of 1992 when seventy-one-year-old Manfred Vogel's prized white Charolais bull is discovered slain on his property in Arp, Texas. On that same day, his grandsons make another gruesome discovery. They dig up two decomposed bodies with gunshot wounds in the back of their heads. On this same day in Berlin, Heinrich "Dutch" Vogel, Manfred's oldest son and an American expatriate, dodges questions about the strange disappearance of a member of the United States Department of State.
In this second novel featuring the Vogel family, Dutch, a freelance government agent, flies to Texas and discovers his once Edenic home is menaced and in turmoil. To restore balance, he must confront not only his father's role as a German soldier in Russia during World War II, but also his mother's family's buried past. Dark deeds have been hidden away on the property, and Dutch seeks to restore the farm's sanctity.