Book excerpt: For years, south Dallas has been ruled by a corrupt caste of politicians who espouse populist rhetoric. Growing fat and rich while their constituents wallow in crime and poverty. Jebediah Shaw never wanted to make the city his home. It had never been more than a place to rest between wars. And now, working in that dark area between government and private business, he's given an impossible task. To keep a man alive that everyone, including himself, has a reason to want dead while choosing sides in a Civil War no one even knows is happening. At the beginning of the end of the American empire, at the edge of what was and what will be, he knows in the end all a man has, all he has any control over, is his word and his work. He will do whatever it takes to complete his mission. Dallas, may never be the same.