Mayme and Katie have become friends, which is unusual given that their friendship has spouted at the end of the Civil War and that Mayme is a former slave, while Katie is the daughter of a plantation owner. Both girls have been orphaned by the war, left alone on Katie's family plantation. The land is the one thing they still share, and they don't want to leave it. But if anyone finds out the two of them live there alone, they will be forced to move.

After the death of their mother en route to the west, 15-year-old Corrie Belle Hollister and her younger brothers and sisters arrive by wagon train in Miracle Springs, California in hopes of finding their Uncle Nick. But the "land of promise" her long-lost father had sought ahead of them now looks frightening and dangerous. Many surprises await them—not the least of which is discovering that their uncle has skipped town with the sheriff after him. Who could Corrie turn to next?

The world whipped around her in a dizzying funnel of lights and shouts, people in uniforms pressing in from all directions. Noelle sat motionless in the street, barely able to breathe. His little body was too still. Too broken.

Holly has drifted from one place to the next for as long as she can remember, never settling long enough to build a life. It's the only way she knows how to survive in a world that has no place for someone like her. But when mysterious footsteps follow her home, and she finds a cryptic note taped to her door, she realizes she's stayed too long. The man she's hiding from has found her. But how?   

"I should have tried harder." Those final words are scrawled across a note that’s been pinned to a man's remains. Pulled to a crime scene in the middle of the night, Detective Marx struggles to unravel the mystery behind a message written by the victim. A suicide note...or an admission of guilt? Before he can discover the truth, what seems to be a random act of violence becomes something far more dangerous. With very little evidence and even less time, Detective Marx searches for the common thread between the victims, but his efforts might put him directly in the killer’s path.