Paul Hostetler

A medical examiner discovers that an innocent shooting victim in a robbery died of bubonic plague. With only 48 hours to find the killer, who is now a ticking time bomb threatening the entire city, a grisly manhunt through the seamy underworld of the New Orleans Waterfront is underway.

The Beans are poor, proud, hated by all, but alive in the sense that they struggle against their lot and support each other in time of trouble. Earlene lives across the street from the Bean's trailer, and the view from her window is better than any daytime television soap opera; especially Beal Bean, and especially Beal Bean shirtless. When Reuben Bean is sent to prison for resisting arrest for out-of-season deer hunting, Beal takes up with Reuben's woman Roberta. He also has a child by Earlene, with a triangle of sex complicated by poverty.

After a young man goes missing at a run-down local amusement park, his family take jobs there in an effort to uncover what happened to him and, in the process, meet a cadre of unsettling characters.

This romantic drama focuses on the romance between a 14-year-old mathematics genius and a 19-year-old All-American volleyball player.

Louisiana's governor asks war hero Francis C. Grevemberg to lead the state police against corruption.