For nearly seventy years, Dan Willis has kept a promise made at sixteen never to divulge a dark secret he shares with five others. But keeping that promise has weighed heavily on him. Now that the five others have died, Dan decides it is finally time to unburden his conscience.

Shoal Bend is Dan's story, set in the bottomlands of the West Fork of the White River in southwestern Indiana during the Great Depression. It was a simpler, more innocent time. Yet, events that begin to unfold in the summer of 1934 due to Dan's friendship with Mac Eller are neither simple nor innocent. Violence seems to breed more violence, and Dan finds himself enveloped in an evil he could never have foreseen.