Maverick investigative reporter, Welly Fludgate, has been missing for a year when history buff and private investor David Greenwood finances a search for a cannon said to be lost in Lake George during the famous 1776 Henry Knox haul from Ticonderoga to Boston.  A latter-day Last of the Mohicans lady joins the effort. Veteran Lake Georgers, David and wife Alicia live spring-to-fall on family owned Three Indians Island. Alicia, a college professor in Saratoga, teaches how fiction illuminates history. Down Albany way, where Alicia's son Archer reports the political news on TV and shills for the Governor, elected officials pluck the flesh off the body politic and the flag of self-interest flies high.Before vanishing, Fludgate, a Jamaican family branch descendant of the three illustrious Howe brothers of 18th century British military and naval fame and hi-octane destroyer of political careers, was closing in on entrenched Governor Vito Gennaro. With Welly fleshing out the ample array of skeletons in his closet, how far off could be the Gov's day of reckoning?When David's dive team expands to include our modern-day Cora, assuming dispensation from the literary gods to grant a second act to Cooper's full-blooded avatar of diversity, banished to the nether world by the demands of narrow convention, we feel comfortable stirring the pot (read 'Lake') to see what comes bubbling up.