The blood ballad

the long version

Genealogist Torie O'Shea is out birding on the cliffs of the Mississippi River as part of New Kassell, Missouri's first ever bird-watching Olympics, when someone starts shooting at her and her partner. Disoriented and running for their lives, they stumble over an antique trunk and discover a badly beaten dead body stuffed inside. Soon after, musicologist Glen Morgan shows up at the Kendall House, Torie's new textile museum, claiming to be her cousin and to have proof that her grandfather secretly may have written a number of popular songs for the famous country music singers, the Morgan Family Players. Torie starts to uncover secrets about her family and the town that even she didn't know.