Charlotte Brownie Wright is the town clerk in tiny map-dot Abbott, a Southern town determined not to leap too quickly into the next century. She is best described as a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Flo Castleberry from Mel's Diner and has big hair, a big heart, and a big laugh. She stays on top of the action in Abbott with the help of the local cast of characters, good fashion sense, and good pimento cheese and pickle sandwiches. Investigating a murder is the last thing from her mind until she finds the town historian dead in the old courthouse. With the police force down one man, Brownie steps up with the organizational skills only a clerk can possess. She and the police chief work their way through a set of contradictory clues, a nineteenth century old civil war ghost, and motives abound.