Where the Hurt Is

It's an unseasonably hot April night in 1965. The social revolutions rocking America have mostly bypassed Burr, a tiny rural community in Western Oklahoma. Like much of the state, Burr remains as it's always been: religious. Conservative. And 100 percent white.

When an unknown young African American woman is found murdered on the railroad tracks outside town, most of Burr would rather look the other way. The town's police chief, troubled local hero and ex-Marine Emmett Hardy, doesn't have that luxury. A lover of books and jazz in the land of football and country and Western, Emmett is an outsider in a place he knows like the back of his hand.

In his search for the killer, he's forced to slice through layers of hate and hypocrisy to confront the ethical rot at the town's core while being haunted by the vision of a life and love that might have been.