When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home. Ben’s daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady’s wife, Dee, ever since that awful night. Now 14 years old, Emma has been growing distant and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents.

Max Rupert has left his position as a Minneapolis homicide detective to live in solitude. Mourning the tragic death of his wife, he's also racked by guilt --- he alone knows what happened to her killer. But then the former local sheriff, Lyle Voight, arrives with a desperate plea: Lyle’s daughter, Sandy, and his six-year-old grandson, Pip, have disappeared. Lyle is certain that Sandy's ex-husband, Reed, is behind it, but the new sheriff is refusing to investigate. When Max reluctantly looks into their disappearance, he too becomes convinced something has gone very wrong. But the closer Max and Lyle get to finding proof, the more slippery Reed becomes, until he makes a break for the beautiful but formidable Boundary Waters wilderness with vulnerable Pip in tow.

Lila Nash is on the verge of landing her dream job --- working as a prosecutor under the Hennepin County Attorney --- and has settled into a happy life with her boyfriend, Joe Talbert. But when a woman is pulled from the Mississippi River, barely alive, things in the office take a personal turn. The police believe the woman’s assailant is local photographer Gavin Spenser, but the case quickly flounders as the evidence wears thin. The more determined Lila is to put Gavin behind bars, the more elusive justice becomes. Battling a vindictive new boss and haunted by the ghosts of her own unspeakable attack, which she’s kept a dark secret for eight long years, Lila knows the clock is ticking down.

Boady Sanden is the new kid at St. Ignatius High School. When Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, Boady's life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins, a black family, forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he's taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold, the biggest of which is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town --- and he will be forced to choose sides.