Alice Ploughmaster, the beloved mayor of a Midwestern city, is convicted of public corruption and is sentenced to prison. After her release, Alice commits herself to redeeming her reputation but runs into a much larger controversy eclipsing her personal trials. She notices kidnappings, abductions, and missing persons - only to learn the crisis is a small portion of a larger catastrophe... an international conspiracy of human trafficking, drug and arms trade, slavery, and money laundering. With the assistance of a noted philosophy professor at Chapel Hill and his witty and ingenious wife, a classics scholar from Athens, they uncover a deceitful cabal of international philanthropic charities involved in secretly building human trafficking networks. "Millstone Around the Neck" is the story of a wise, endearing, and elegant woman working to expose treachery, deceit, and corruption by relying on her Midwestern common sense.