Kathryn Addison Thomas, "Kat", is a survivor of Atlanta's Bowen Homes Projects. First abandoned while seven months pregnant by her husband and later suffering the death of her fiancé, Sylvester Brown, in a gang related drive-by shooting, while pregnant with her second son, nobody messes with her boys...especially gang members bent on recruiting them. When Milton Davis "Mad Dog" Lincoln, the Raven's Claw incidentally responsible for Sylvester Brown's death, is banished by the Raven's Claws, as a suspected federal informant, he tries to start a new chapter of the Claws in Poplar Bluffs. His first recruit, Quinton Thomas, Kat's younger son by Sylvester Brown, wants to be a Claw, but sees Mad Dog for what he is, an obsessive, violent user of others to achieve his own ends. Mad Dog responds by violently intimidating Quinton, his brother Jimmy, his girl friend Sondra and even other gang members. Detective Mike Eiser must disrupt Mad Dog's agenda, but Mad Dog's habit of using his gang members to commit chargeable crimes limits Eiser's ability to stop Mad Dog's actions. When Mad Dog's federal management team decides to use his contact with a North Korean agent to sell guns illegally for themselves, Mad Dog responds with multiple double-crosses, and a desperate plan to take the money and run. However, his desperate plan runs head-long into a showdown with Detective Eiser and the Jericho County Sheriff's Office. Literally crawling out of a disastrous confrontation, Mad Dog attempts a home invasion to exact revenge against Quinton Thomas for rejecting him and the Raven's Claws...with completely unpredictable results. But then, Kat Thomas is a survivor, and nobody messes with her boys...especially gang members bent on recruiting them...and, if it can be proven that Quinton is Sylvester Brown's son that may help Quinton even more.