In the wooded hills of Southeast Missouri the pace of life is far different than the bustling clamor of the burgeoning suburbs which surround major metropolitan areas of the country. Even today, the rhythm of the hills, pays little heed to a time clock, or sweep second hand. There is a time of warmth, a time of cold. There is a time when the clouds offer nothing for a dry land, and there are times when the storms come. In 1961 the bootheel was a world apart, separated from concrete, steel and neon, by more than just miles. All manner of creatures sought food and shelter under the dense canopy of foliage in the deep woods. The gently rolling hills even offered Mason Powell, a wounded Korean War veteran, a measure of peace. But as the weather heated up in the summer of ’61, the small towns bordering the swamps and forests of the bootheel region were rocked by a brutal slaying—by a predator armed with razor sharp talons and lethal fangs. Conservation Agent Lynn Moody calls on Mason Powell to track an elusive killer in terrain where there is sufficient cover to hide a small army, let alone a single killer. In the swamps and heavily wooded hills the advantage was to the hunted, not the hunter. That advantage becomes apparent when traps and determined hunters fail to bring down the predator. Mason is forced to reassess the best way to prevent more deaths. Reluctantly, he resorts to stalking the killer alone, on the killer’s home ground, while tying to avoid becoming the hunted himself. In the shadows beneath the velvet green forest canopy, Mason Powell learns a grim lesson—there may be a very good reason to fear things that go bump in the night!