Straight on to Murder — Wanda Luttrell

Amid the controversy ignited by the new national education program known as Common Core, a small Southern school district finds itself embroiled in a modern replay of the Scopes Trial that sweeps six innocent people and a hired assassin into a morass of love, loss, loneliness, grief, and greed that leads...straight on to murder It is a million dollar contract that calls for the elimination of Creation, Inc.'s fiery head attorney Alex Sullivan that motivates the would-be assassin to cut the brakes on Sullivan's Toyota, but it is his hatred for retired prosecuting attorney Zephaniah Trebble that motivates him to seek revenge for the 15 years he spent in prison. However, when Sullivan's car crashes into the rear of a semi on the interstate, it is Alex's co-worker and growing love interest Beth Hodge and her mother Virgie Trebble who are killed in the borrowed car. ZephTrebble has lost both his wife and his daughter, and is left alone to raise his seven-year-old granddaughter Ginny Hodge. The assassin is left to develop Plan B to achieve his murderous ambitions. Soon after her mother and grandmother are killed, Ginny rebelliously refuses to accept her second grade teacher's evolutionary teachings so contrary to the creation beliefs she learned from her murdered mother. Her grandfather vows Ginny's First Amendment rights will not be denied, and succeeds in persuading the school board to mandate that the Theory of Intelligent Design be taught in the district's schools along with the Theory of Evolution. Ginny's teacher, the attractive, hedonistic Charlotte Newby, is lured by the promise of a "substantial monetary reward" to join the lawsuit brought by KSOCS, an organization determined that no hint of the Judeo-Christian Theory of Intelligent Design shall pollute the minds of Kentucky's students. They are opposed by the equally determined Zeph Trebble, joined by Alex Sullivan who insists that the Theory of Evolution is in itself a religion--the religion of the atheists and secular progressives. In his grief and uncertainty at raising a little girl on his own, Zeph turns for advice and support to a life-long friend, fourth grade teacher Helen Grace. Helen has decided to retire rather than to fight the Common Core standards that she feels are aimed at taking public education totally out of the hands of parents and local authorities and placing it under the control of the federal government, open to brain-washing propaganda. But asked to return as a temporary substitute, she is on hand for the growing conflict involving the school and district, and for an unexpected revival of long-buried feelings for the new widower. Thrown into the mix is the emotionally disturbed school custodian Napoleon Harrod who has an obsession with pretty little Ginny and becomes her self-appointed guardian. But does 'Poley kidnap her to protect her from the assassin who has decided the best way to make Zeph Trebble suffer is to kill his precious granddaughter, or does he have a more sinister motive? Finally, there's the assassin who has killed before and will strike again and again until both his lucrative contract and his long-awaited vengeance are satisfied. This turmoil is the result of human passions ignited by greed and fueled by grief into an inferno that threatens to destroy everyone involved. Or is it? Could it be simply the latest round in an ancient conflict between good and evil that has raged since before time began? Can those caught up in this conflagration survive and build new lives, new loves from the ashes?