COUNTING COUP

Tad Beckman is the rootless son of a weak-willed mother and the grandson of her tyrannical father who resents him for being the embodiment of her sole act of rebellion - marrying a Yankee soldier from New York. After years of chronicling human misery, Beckman finds himself bored and cynical. When a telephone caller asks him for help one morning, her weakness echoes his mother's own self-pity, and Tad brushes her off. Within days, the caller is dead, murdered by the ex-husband she sought protection from, and Beckman begins an odyssey of redemption.
In his travels, Beckman meets Jocelyn Pritchard - another woman being tormented by her husband. Jocelyn is an alluring and mysterious soon-to-be divorcee who doesn't ask for Tad's help or his love, but who finally accepts both. Thrilled to have a second chance to be a protector, Tad uses his typewriter as his coup stick and strikes out against the man who's hurting her. But when things veer wildly out of control and she disappears, Beckman finds himself drawn to a unique family in a coastal Georgia village, where he learns how a second chance - like life itself - can be a treacherous and unpredictable thing.