Young Jude Brighton has been missing for three days, and while the search for him is in full swing in the small town of Deer Valley, Oregon, the locals are starting to lose hope. Stevie Clark knows what each ticking moment may mean for his cousin, Jude. There was Max Larsen, a young boy who was found dead after also disappearing under mysterious circumstances. And then there were the animals: pets gone missing out of yards. For years, the residents of Deer Valley have murmured about these unsolved crimes…and that a killer may still be lurking around their quiet town. For Stevie, who is determined to find out what really happened to Jude, the awful truth may be too horrifying to imagine.

In the summer of 1991, violence simmers in The Park, a Scarborough housing complex outside of Toronto where Michael and Francis, sons of Trinidadian immigrants, are learning to stomach the careless prejudices that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. Francis, the older of the two brothers, has always been the leader. When their single mother works double to triple shifts, it Francis who helps the days pass, smuggling Michael into his older crew’s barbershop hangout. But Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael’s dreams, on the other hand, are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school. But the bright hopes of all three are violently thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.

Andrew Morrison sacrificed everything to look after his alcoholic mother. But now he’s determined to get out and live his life. That means trading the home he grew up in for a rented room in the house of an old childhood friend --- both of which are in sorry shape. The better acquainted he gets with his new neighbors --- especially the sweet and sexy Harlow Ward --- the more he suspects unspeakable darkness beyond the white picket fence.