Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the capture of their killer, The Travelling Man, Charlie Parker retreats to the wintry Maine landscape of his childhood. By following in the steps of his beloved grandfather, Parker hopes to heal his spirit and get through the bitter anniversary of the murder.

In a gruesome re-enactment of Parker's own nightmares, another young woman and child are killed, and his brief involvement in their lives impels Parker to hunt their vicious murderer. Rita Ferris's estranged husband, Billy Purdue, is the obvious suspect. But as the death toll mounts, Parker comes to realise that the true answer to the puzzle lies thirty years in the past, in a tree with strange fruit, in his own grandfather's history, and in the perverted desires of a monster incarnate - Caleb Kyle.