In 1975, thirteen-year-old Ruby Mae Vickers disappears in Alvin, Alabama. Leah Teal, new detective of Alvin, is assigned to the case. After three months, Ruby Mae finally turns up dead beneath a willow beside a swamp. Twelve years later, another little girl goes missing. Then another. Leah is sure these incidents are connected to the one she failed to solve a dozen years ago. The job of finding them again falls to Leah. She's not prepared for the memories it drags up. Then Leah's own daughter joins the list of missing girls. Told from the point of view of Leah's eleven-year-old son Abe, this is a tense and moving story of one woman's search for the truth and justice as she struggles against a past that won't let her go.
