'The Red Axe' by S.R. Crockett is a tale that begins by introducing us to a young boy named Hugo Gottfried, who lives in the City of Thorn, the high capital city of all the Wolfmark. As a child with a crimson patch sewn on his clothes, he is shunned and bullied by the other children who call him part of the "foul brood of the Red Axe." One night, he wakes up crying and climbs to the top of the tower where he watches the city in the snow and moonlight. This is the night he first meets the Little Playmate, and from that moment, his life changes forever.

Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight when first they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping -- a sturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age -- in a stomacher of blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at the beginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of my sleep. So, all in the sharp chill of the night, I got out of my bed, sitting on the edge with my legs dangling, and looked curiously at the bright streams of moonlight which crossed the wooden floor of my garret. I thought if only I could swim straight up one of them, as the motes did in the sunshine, I should be sure to come in time to the place where my mother was -- the place where all the pretty white things came from -- the sunshine, the moonshine, the starshine, and the snow. "Come down and be killed, foul brood of the Red Axe!" the children cried. And with that they ran as near as they dared, and spat on the wall of our house, or at least on the little wooden panel which opened inward in the great trebly spiked iron door of the Duke's courtyard.

On June 10, 1912, the village of Villisca, Iowa awoke to discover a mass murder had occurred while the town slept. An entire household of eight people had been axed to death in their beds. Within 24 hours, in spite of limited mass communications, the story was national and international news, knocking the White Star Titanic off the front page and captivating the general public. The mass murder became a catalyst to a growing nation starting to realize the 20th century, with all of its advancements, held new forms of terror and insecurity. If the mass murder could happen in this idyllic little village, it could happen anywhere. Author Stephen Bowman's version of the story has been compared to Capote's IN COLD BLOOD mystery as it recreates the gruesome murder and the aftermath in an expose of rural family strife and local mores toward bigotry, superstition and caste system which still exists in rural America today. The suspenseful mystery brings to life a vivid cast of characters. Through the main characters, the themes of rural life and prejudice are revealed as they each struggle with conflicts between self-respect, family honor and justice. The crime remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century