In the fall of 1873, Harriet Mitchell's safe world as a third-year student at Vassar College explodes when she receives news that someone has broken into her family's Brooklyn home and murdered her beloved parents. Overwhelmed by grief and the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings, she looks to the police to identify and apprehend the perpetrator. Yet to her astonishment, they are either unable or unwilling to do so despite several promising leads. Are they being manipulated by friends of New York City's corrupt politicians? Or does the truth lie somewhere in her parents' past during the dark days of slavery? Determined to find out, she teams up with a New York Times reporter and follows a serpentine trail from Canada to post-civil-war Charleston, South Carolina. Having cornered their quarry, the two must survive his treacherous maneuverings one last time to complete their mission and bring him to justice.