The unnamed state in which these events occurred had for nearly two centuries flaunted its renegade spirit, thumbing its nose at Washington. A succession of maverick governors, including one who engineered the state's four-year secession during the Civil War, had served to fashion the commonwealth into a virtual landlocked island unto itself. Only Louisiana rivaled its no-nonsense prisons, only Texas its record on capital punishment.

So when Brady Wayne Darby, a no-account loser raised in a dingy trailer park encounters Thomas Carey, a weary man of God, an entire state - indeed, a nation - is affected.