Augustus "Gus" Belmont was your typical commercial airline pilot. Late forties, divorced with one kid, he lived life as he saw it. The only problem:
he was dying. And, Gus was a Rat.

Kristin Belmont was Gus's daughter-smart, beautiful, a college senior with the entire world ahead of her. She was not a Rat-though she could see and talk with ghosts.

Gus faced his mortality with ticked off stoicism, but he really wanted closure for two twenty-five-year-old mysteries: Why did his one true love disappear before their marriage? Was he guilty of causing another Rat's death?

Love, murder, mystery, ghosts. Add the Civil War and Vietnam conflict to the brew, a soupcon of the great military college-Virginia Military Institute with its Brother Rat Cadet Corps-and you have SHOES.