Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of a camp for indigent orphans and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. These events unleash a season of madness, violence, and sin upon the Mississippi community surrounding Eagle Lake. Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino prettyboy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just discovered that the only woman who's ever truly moved him is also being moved by another. What begins as revenge quickly becomes a vicious spree that gives vent to Mortimer's infantile pride and lifelong fascination with knives.The young sheriff, a pompous Northerner who fakes a local accent, is confounded by Mortimer and less interested in solving the crimes than in pursuing his two passions, amateur theater and Melanie Wooten, a beautiful, patrician widow more than twice his thirty-four years. This means Mortimer's only challengers are Max Raymond, a disgraced doctor and eccentrically Christian saxophonist; Byron Egan, an ex-biker and speed freak and now a pastor; John Roman, an African-American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer; and Peden, an alcoholic lay preacher who plays electrified fiddle and lives in a junkyard. But Mortimer has a hold on each and every one of them - a long-standing debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities they cannot yet desert. Read Less