Copperas Cove (Paperback)

When Jonathon's marriage crashes around his head, he leaves Pittsburgh to start a new life on the Gulf coast. Followed by phantoms from the past, he sets out envisioning the bliss of solitude and long lazy Saturdays on warm southern beaches. Maybe he can find a drugstore in Biloxi that needs a pharmacist. Maybe, if he meets the right woman, he can get these misguided notions about men out of his head. The generator on his '48 Ford coupe goes out fifty miles south of Tupelo, a long hot three mile walk to the next town, an isolated hamlet called Copperas Cove. Temporarily stranded, he finds himself having a hamburger at Rexall soda fountain, unaware that his destiny is taking shape in the mind of a young woman three stools down. Betty Marie, the quixotic town flirt, has taken an interest in him. Jonathon soon learns, if he's looking for a job as a pharmacist, he came to the right place. Old man Peterson, the Rexall's ancient pharmacist, has been wanting to retire for years Betty Marie quickly points out, that other than a beach, there's nothing in Biloxi he can't find right here in Copperas Cove. Settled in his new job, the city fathers eventually talk him into taking the inconsequential part-time job as town sheriff, assuring him the most complicated issue he'll have to deal with will be an occasional drunk. There hasn't been a murder or serious crime in Copperas Cove in decades, until Jonathon decides to pin on the badge. A popular college student is raped and murdered and left on the side of the road out by Stone Lake. A friend of Jonathon's is accused, and with the discovery of some damning evidence, becomes the prime suspect. Simpler times in another era. An age old dilemma. A small town in the deep south. A brutal rape and murder. An exiled husband facing life-changing events. The bigoted dramas of 1950's Mississippi. Ingredients all for a witches brew of emotion, mystery and intrigue. Copperas Cove weaves an unpredictable thread through the lives of all concerned, a thread that leaves no one unchanged.