Jud Phoenix, a 70 year old retired lawyer living in Chicago, Illinois, is asked by an old friend, Eric Chapple, known as Chappie, who lives in a nursing home in Bullpen, Montna, to find Carla Depuy. Phoenix had grown up in Bullpen and went to high school with both Chappie and Carla. Phoenix left Bullpen to become an FBI agent, a U.S. Attorney and finally a partner in a Chicago law firm. Chappie reveals Phoenix that he participated in Carla's rape 50 years before the current time. He is overcome by remorse for this act and believes she is still alive because he has heard a song she wrote all those years ago on the radio currently. She was a country western singer locally at the time of the rape. Chappie wants to compensate Carla if she can be found. Phoenix reluctantly takes on the search. It takes him into dangers and difficulties that he could not have anticipated when Chappie asked him to look for Carla. He survives an assassination attempt and kills the hit man in the process. He discovers current crimes that have a relationship to what had happened 50 years before his search, and a murder that occurred at about the time of the rape that has a surprising relationship to the present. He encounters a woman, Jodi, whom he knew in high school and finds that she made a successful career as a prostitute. She helps him in his search. He has to deal with a renegade preacher to motorcycle gangs, who has a mother known as a famous madam of a legendary brothel. He encounters people he knew as a child and a young man before moving to Chicago, some of whom pose a danger to him now. In order to find Carla and to defeat those who wish him harm, he has to conduct a dangerous operation which involves local law enforcement and the FBI. Finding Carla takes an unexpected turn that is both sad and fulfilling.