Sunshine Highway — Ruth Francisco

Three sheets to the wind, Sheriff Bill Crocker drives home late at night on a country road, swerving into a woman and her young daughter, who sit in a parked car. He knows the law, he knows what's right, but in a panic -- a moment of unfathomable fecklessness -- takes off into the dark.

When he gets home Crocker realizes how devastating a hit-and-run will be to his career. But he cannot begin to imagine the aftershocks that will ripple through his community. People lose jobs, marriages break down, children commit crimes, homes are lost, schools are disrupted -- the community is ripped asunder. He does the worst thing he could possible do -- he tries to cover it up.

Enter hotshot investigative reporter, Clive Johnson, an ivy-league educated African American, who finds Southern vestiges of racism and cronyism baffling. He begins to dig around, uncovering corruption, fraud, misuse of public office, and possibly murder.

Crocker fights back, using all his old tricks. But when a human skeleton shows up in a sinkhole, Crocker's little empire begins to unravel, revealing horrifying secrets from the past.

Evocative and poetic, rich with Southern imagery, deep with emotion and humor, Sunshine Highway is an epic saga about the struggle of the South to shake itself free from a painful past to join the twenty-first century.