"The hallways are empty, the school day long over, and the din of lockers and youthful laughter have dissolved into silence. It's as if the very walls are waiting. And then, through the intercom, a song begins, a song from the soundtrack of a forgotten life. In 1958, a rumble goes down outside the brand new high school in Honeyville, Texas. Chaos ensues, a life is lost, and Johnny Kinross disappears. But in 2010, someone finds him. Orphaned at the age of ten, seventeen-year-old Maggie O'Bannon finally finds a permanent home with her elderly aunt in a small Texas town. Working part-time as a school janitor, she becomes enmeshed in a fifty-year-old tragedy where nothing is as it seems and the boy of her dreams might vanish when the bell rings. This volatile and mismatched romance is doomed from its start, as Maggie struggles to hold on to yet another love she is destined to lose. Secret meetings and hushed affection are threatened by outside forces, resulting in a desperate race to keep a secret no one would understand. Deeply romantic, funny and tender, Slow Dance in Purgatory captures the heartache of a love story where a happy ending might be decades too late."--Page 4 of cover.