The Reckoning

Pete Banning was Clanton’s favourite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family; a farmer, father, and a faithful member of the Methodist Church. Then one cool October morning in 1946, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the Church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn’t shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete’s only statement about it – to the sheriff, to his defense attorney, to the judge, to his family and friends, and to the people of Clanton – was ‘I have nothing to say’. What turned Pete from a pillar of the community into cold-hearted killer? And why won’t he confide in anyone? All his closest family knows is that it must have been something devastating – and that the fallout will haunt them, and the town, for decades to come . . .