Barbara Payton

The Ballad of Lacey Jay Barbara Payton

When Lacey Jay Autrey pens the lyrics, "Life is like a ball of yarn," she couldn't know how prophetic the phrase would ring. Not only will her life be entangled with the man who murders her, but so will that of her oldest daughter. In Luke we find a tragic, nearly sympathetic figure, twisted and destroyed by the sexual appetites of his mother. He kills her and disposes of her body. Years later, the blackouts begin when Luke awakens to a dead lover in his bed. Lacey's older daughter, Willie Nell, heads the Investigations Department at a Dallas all-news TV station. She is first to notice a small group of cold murder cases with eerie similarities. With her police contacts, she's able to gather more cases from across the state, Among them the unsolved case of her mother. Along the way, not only is the murder solved, but the reporter and her crippled, embittered kid sister revisit their past to learn that much of what they thought they knew about their dead parents was grievously wrong. From that realization and the shared pain of reliving those tragic time, they gain peace and find their roots to their natural relationship.