Book excerpt: When Valerie agreed to donate a few weekends to help her bookseller friend sort and catalog a private library, someone from her childhood reentered her life again. A wounded but recovering soldier, formerly stationed in Iraq, had inherited the house containing the library. Valeries weekends away from her book keeping business were usually spent on archaeological digs or surveys with a local university professor and his students. The intertwining of these two groups and the sugar plantations and bayous where they all meet, cause drama, terror and a final conclusion to a mysterious disappearance.