Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the forty-two killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local Gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident? Alma thinks she knows the answer -- and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair.