When Artillery Conray Patton washes up on the bank of the Angelina River in 1958, it's both the end of a journey and the beginning of a story. It's one that stretches from the Civil War to the civil rights era, from the now-gone riverboat town of Pattonia, Texas to Senegal on the west coast of Africa. It takes a pretty big man to encompass that kind of span. Art Patton pulls it off and then some. There are skeletons and voices in Patton's past to be sure. But the real mystery is Art himself. Solve him, and the rest of the story follows.