Twenty-three children vanish from a school bus in Caldwell, Texas — and Ruth Baker's daughter should have been on it. The trail leads to the infamous Red Barn Killings of twenty years ago, and to the powerful people who may have been protecting a terrible secret all along.

A desperate plea to save a dying son draws Rangers Baker and Tate into Harvest Home — a town frozen in time, sealed off from the outside world, where medicine has been replaced by rituals and children are taken for ceremonies no one dares resist. What starts as a rescue turns into a fight for survival in a town that tightens like a noose.

A dogged small-town detective is found dumped on a remote ranch, dead from chasing a case nobody else believed in. As Rangers Baker and Tate retrace his final weeks, a book club of true-crime-obsessed women called the Bloody Bookmarks crosses a line that can never be uncrossed — and the line between victim and killer has never been harder to find.