For world-weary Sheriff's deputy Bernadette, this is both her beat and her hometown, and a railroad conglomerate's bid to buy up family homes and land by the acre brings long-simmering tensions bubbling to the surface. When Bernadette's lover Leslie, a public-interest lawyer defending the poor, turns up dead, she must decide whether to walk the line or take on her town's oldest and wealthiest family. —JK