Deep in the woods just outside Acker's Gap, West Virginia, rises a ragged chunk of what was once a high stone wall. This is all that remains of Wellwood, a psychiatric hospital for the poor that burned to the ground decades ago. And it is here that Bell Elkins --- prosecutor turned private investigator --- makes a grim discovery while searching for a missing teenager: a dead body, marred by a ghastly wound that can only mean murder. To solve the mystery of what happened in these woods, Bell and her partners --- former sheriff Nick Fogelsong and former deputy Jake Oakes --- must confront the tangled history of Wellwood and its dark legacy, while each grapples with a private torment.

After a three-year prison sentence, Bell Elkins is back in Acker's Gap. And she finds herself in the white-hot center of a complicated and deadly case --- even as she comes to terms with one last, devastating secret of her own. A prominent local family has fallen victim to the same sickness that infects the whole region: drug addiction. With mother against father, child against parent, and tensions that lead inexorably to tragedy, they are trapped in a grim, hopeless struggle with nowhere to turn. Teamed up with former Deputy Jake Oakes, who battles his own demons as he adjusts to life as a paraplegic, and aided by the new prosecutor, Rhonda Lovejoy, Bell tackles a case as poignant as it is perilous, as heartbreaking as it is challenging.

The first drug overdose comes just after midnight, when a young woman dies on the dirty floor of a gas station bathroom. To the people of the small town of Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, it is just another tragedy. But then there is another overdose. And another. And another. Prosecutor Bell Elkins soon realizes that her Appalachian hometown is facing its starkest challenge yet: a day of constant heroin overdoses from a batch tainted with a lethal tranquilizer. While the clock ticks and the bodies fall, Bell and her colleagues desperately track the source of the deadly drug --- and engage in fierce debates over the wisdom of expending precious resources to save the lives of self-destructive addicts.

In 1944, three young men from a small town in West Virginia are among the American forces participating in D-Day, changing the fortunes of the war with one bold stroke. How is that moment aboard a Navy ship as it barrels toward the Normandy shore related to the death of an old man in an Appalachian nursing home 72 years later? Bell Elkins, prosecuting attorney in Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, is asked by an old acquaintance to look into the death of her beloved father in an Alzheimer’s care facility. Did he die of natural causes --- or was something more sinister to blame?

Royce Dillard doesn't remember much about the day his parents --- and 123 other souls --- died in the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster. He was only two years old when he was ripped from his mother's arms. But now Dillard, who lives off the grid with only a passel of dogs for company, is fighting for his life one more time: He's on trial for murder. Prosecutor Bell Elkins faces her toughest challenge yet in this haunting story of vengeance, greed and the fierce struggle for social justice.

It’s high summer in Acker's Gap, West Virginia, but no one is enjoying the rugged natural landscape. Not while a killer stalks the small town and its hard-luck inhabitants. County prosecutor Bell Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong are stymied by a murderer who seems to come and go like smoke on the mountain. At the same time, Bell must deal with the return from prison of her sister, Shirley --- who, like Bell, carries the indelible scars of a savage past.

County prosecuting attorney Bell Elkins's latest case is a bad one: pregnant 16-year-old Lucinda Trimble’s body has been found at the bottom of Bitter River, and she was dead before she hit the water. But that’s not all Bell is coping with these days: her daughter is now living hours away with her ex-husband, one of her closest friends is behaving oddly, and a face from her past has resurfaced. Searching for the truth will lead Bell down a path that could put her very life at risk.

Three elderly men are gunned down at a local diner. One of the witnesses to the brutal incident was Carla Elkins, the prosecuting attorney’s daughter, who believes she might be uniquely placed to help her mother do her job. But could Carla also end up doing more harm than good --- in fact, putting her own life in danger?