A young woman, Rita Ferris, and her little son die at the hands of an unknown killer, and the past and present collide violently for Charlie Parker.

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Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the hunt for their killer, the Traveling Man, Parker has retreated to the wintry Maine landscapes of his youth. But his return reawakens the ghosts of the past, forcing him to join the hunt for Billy Purdue, Rita's ex-husband and the chief suspect in the slayings.

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As the death toll mounts, it becomes clear that someone else is hunting for Billy Purdue, someone who seems to know Parker almost as well as he knows himself, and that the true answer to the puzzle lies thirty years in the past; in a tree with strange fruit; in the troubled history of Parker's own grandfather; and in the violent origins of a mythical killer: the monster known only as Caleb Kyle.