"The KKK weren't never about race. It were always about power and greed."
So begins 86-year-old Hadley Thompson, who insists a rural historian research why two people were murdered. At first, Hubbell has little interest in the matter. Not only did the murders take place in 1924, there never was a question of who committed them. What difference could a motive make now? It is Thompson's insistence that an active Ku Klux Klan chapter fueled the feud between two blue-eyed, Baptist families that helps change Hubbell's mind.
Soon Thompson and Hubbell are an unlikely duo, tramping through field grass, combing through copies of dusty newspapers, and driving down gravel roads to discover what made friends and neighbors turn against each other in post World War I America. More than just a story of a feud, Blood River Rising whispers a warning for today's increasingly diverse society.