Butterfly Ways

It’s 1987, and rural newspapers are collapsing like cardhouses all across the country. Brian Morrison, the investigative reporter for the Stanton, Illinois, Post-Times, a downstate daily with a dwindling circulation, puts his body on the line trying to save it.

A young forest ranger, Kimberly Ryan, disappears from her job in the nearby Shawnee National Forest in southern IIllinois. Morrison goes looking. The girl’s sister, who runs the whorehouse in Stanton, tells him, “Kimmy has butterfly ways. She’ll be back.”

Maybe. But butterflies have an eye for color, which tends to lead them astray.

While Morrison is looking, his obligations to the paper pile up: A local garage is chopping cars and a Russian gang is laundering the money. The whorehouse is hiring Stanton University students. For no apparent reason, a retired couple gets murdered. An FBI agent is abducted and stuffed into a car trunk. A little boy goes missing in the forest.

Not only is there too much for Morrison to focus on, but he suffers from PTSD, or something like it. To make it worse for him, he and his wife Cindy have parted ways. Besides trying to save the paper, he needs to be a good father to his two daughters.

Suddenly, killers come after him.

Things are very bad for a man trying to do good.