9JF Kearney, author of Once Upon a Time there was a Girl: A Murder at Mobile Bay, is back with her second installment in the Cajun Lawman murder mystery series. The complicated law man with the dogged moral compass, finds himself ensnarled in a mysterious disappearance of a woman who 35 years ago, was the girl he left behind. Tom's first love Calli Tucker is now a prominent evangelist in Blue Bayou, Louisiana.
My Calli...our Calli is missing, Tom, Delia Tucker tells him during a late night call. The desperate call forces Tom to remember the night he'd walked away from Calli Tucker on a September night in 1975, never to look back. He realized the guilt never disappeared.
Tom's search for Callindra the evangelist forces him to revisit his time in Blue Bayou, and the love he left behind.
Tom wouldn't know that young Calli secretly delivered a child at a New Orleans Catholic orphanage, and tearfully leaves her with the nuns who promise a good home for Lucia Benet. Or, that five-month old Lucia Benet was adopted by prominent Louisiana Senator Kent Whittington, and his socialite wife Cindy King Whittington.
Yet, Lucy Whittington's life is far from a storied one. She grows up in a home surrounded by strangers and endless political gatherings attended by the biggest names in the region. At nine, she overhears her mother's phone conversation. You know damn well we didn't know that part of the girl's history! We would never have adopted her. We have a good mind to sue you!
After this life-changing revelation, Lucy finds solace inside the internet world, and eventually begins a search for her biological mother - a woman she both loves and hates. It is this desperate search that leads Lucy to Nurse Rachel, the attendant nurse at the Catholic Orphanage during Lucy's birth. The imperfect nurse with a photographic memory remembers Callie Tucker down to the mole on her left ear.
The girl's search for her mother brings trouble into Blue Bayou, reveals the truths behind those in Calli Tucker's closest circle and leaves the good pastor on the brink of death.