Du Pre's hands are full when his granddaughter, an Iraq War vet, a religious cult, and murder sweep into his small townGabriel Du Pre's precocious granddaughter Pallas has returned from her Washington, DC, boarding school, and trouble seems to have come along for the ride. Du Pre's girlfriend's son, Chappie, is also back in town; he served in Iraq and arrives minus one leg and one eye. As the family tries to help him adjust to civilian life, the town is invaded by a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist sect, whose preacher is hell-bent on imposing his own beliefs on the easygoing people of Toussaint, where even the most pious prefer to keep God to themselves.Du Pre is content to ignore the evangelists until a mountain hike turns up the body of a little girl. Although he has no hard evidence, instinct tells him that the fundamentalists may be to blame. Du Pre hunts the countryside for the young girl's killer, wishing as always that the outside world would leave Montana alone.