When last seen in 'The Glass Rainbow', Dave Robicheaux was recovering in a New Orleans hospital from a near-fatal bullet wound. Immobilized and heavily medicated by morphine, he was visited there by a beautiful Creole woman named Tee Jolie Melton. After she's gone, his fond, hazy remembrances of her are rekindled by one song on the iPod that she kindly left behind. Now obsessed by the song and thoughts of her, he goes in search of his Creole belle, Robicheaux finds instead the frozen corpse of her sister floating at sea grapples with that mystery, another oil rig explodes on the Gulf, bringing with it a fresh sense of the frailty of things.