Philadelphia crime boss Sweets Maybrey has a dead body in his trunk and a weapon underneath his seat. He travels in a stolen car to a destination in the Pocono Mountains called Deer Lake. The destination has meaning to him, less so for his 'passenger.' It is a crossroads, a place where he plans to literally bury the past and begin anew. Thus opens the novel Rose of the Badlands, the third novel in the Sweets Maybrey crime series. While traversing the winding mountain roads Sweets recalls the tumultuous events of the past year: The disastrous fight with a no talent bum named Bobby Turner that ends with Bobby in a coma and Sweets, feeling guilty for the illegal blow that devastated his opponent, on the hook to help find the man's missing sister, Rose. As Sweets' quest for Rose intensifies, his organization is being threatened by the Marks Brothers, a Harlem crew with strong connections to The Commission, the head of organized crime in America. Soon, a physically and mentally devastated Sweets has no organization and no purpose. Two unlikely women rescue him - one elderly and white, the other a black wild-child. With their help Sweets slowly recovers, determined to regain his self respect and what used to be his. He makes war on the Marks Brothers but the key to making himself whole, he realizes, is to discover what happened to Rose, fulfilling that promise made long ago.