Lake City, Florida, 1930: Al Capone checks in for an unusually long stay at the Blanche Hotel. The following night, young Jack Blevins witnesses a body being dumped heralding a summer of violence. One-by-one, people controlling vice activities swing from KKK ropes. No moonshine distributor, gaming operator, or brothel madam, black or white, is safe from the Klan's self-righteous vigilantism. Jack's sister Meg, a waitress at the Blanche, and her fiancé, a sheriff’s deputy, believe the lynchings are cover for a larger ambition than simply ridding the county of vice. Someone, possibly backed by Capone, has plans for filling the voids created. But as the body count grows, they come to understand this knowledge may get them killed. Gainesville, Florida, 2011: Liz Reams, a young academic specializing in the history of American crime, moves across the continent to follow a man who convinces her of his devotion yet refuses to say the three simple words I love you. She is attracted to edginess and a certain type of glamour in her men, both living and historical. Her personal life is an emotional roller coaster, but her career options suddenly blossom beyond all expectation, creating a very different type of stress. To deal with it all, Liz loses herself in her professional passion, original research into the life and times of her favorite bad boy, Al Capone. What she discovers about 1930’s summer of violence, and herself in the process, leaves her reeling at first and then changed forever.