title: Ashes in the Outhouse
author: Reed, Joel B.
description: Life is quiet in Live Oak, Texas. Folks like it that way. The year is 1957 and the American Dream is in full bloom. Yet there is a dark side no one talks about. It's called The Roadhouse. Good old boys go there to get drunk and gamble. They can get serviced there, too. Sheriff John Stone wants to shut the place down. He sees it for the cancer it is. The county commissioners disagree. The Roadhouse brings in lots of outside money. Some of it goes in their pockets. Every time John Stone tries to raid the place, someone tips them off. Then one of the commissioners dies there. When the manager tries to gloss it over, John Stone starts to dig. The deeper he goes, the nastier it gets. Two more bodies are uncovered, both homicides, and he finds a mob connection. When he turns up two witnesses, the question is whether he can keep them alive. Set in north Texas, Ashes in the Outhouse is a journey into another time, another world. It is also a journey into the discovery of hope. For the deeper story that runs parallel to vice and corruption, is that of a man and woman who find love in the ashes of their lives.