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Sheriff Cletus Haley knows that nothing unusual
ever happens in his little town of Harmony, at least not since the days when his Californios ancestors were given Harmony
Valley in a land grant from the Mexican governor. Located along the beautiful Central California coastline of San Luis Obispo
County, Harmony is both insulated and isolated from much of the social unrest plaguing the rest of the Depression weary state
- at least until that fateful spring morning in 1937 when unusual things begin to happen.
Amid rumors of Okies
overrunning their Valley and ruining their fragile economy, a series of petty thefts begins to both unnerve the town and frustrate
the sheriff. But when a tin of arsenic powder is stolen from the town's doctor, Sheriff Haley realizes that much more than
just stolen pocket watches and teapots is at stake.
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From
the strange disappearance of Jimmy P., son of the town's most prominent family to the wind-whipped conflagration that
claims the life of the town's enigmatic and psychotic school teacher's mother to the deadly wreck of the Southern Pacific's
Coast Line freight train, the forces of man and nature seem hell-bent on rendering Sheriff Haley's quiet little town asunder.
And what started as petty theft soon evolves
into scandal, cover-up and murder. It will take
all of Sheriff Haley's ingenuity and not a little luck to discover what is going on and who is behind it all, discoveries
that will lead him to the world famous Ambassador Hotel's Cocoanut Grove and to Ruby Jean Johnson, the nightclub's most popular
new performer, who will have no choice but to give the country lawman, as well as the star-studded packed house, a show to
be talked about for a lifetime.
Against the backdrop of California's Depression-era labor struggles, its politics
and clashes among its culturally diverse citizenry, "Discord In Harmony" weaves a tale of love and duplicity, duty
and deceit, and yes, discord and harmony.
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