Filmmaker Maggie MacGowen learns the hard way that going home again can be deadly. While clearing out her deceased father's desk, Maggie discovers that he had locked away potential evidence in a brutal unsolved murder 30 years earlier. When she begins to ask questions of family and old friends, it emerges that there are people in that seemingly tranquil multi-ethnic Berkeley neighborhood who will go to lethal lengths to prevent the truth from coming out. With the help of her new love, Jean-Paul Bernard, Maggie uncovers secrets about the murdered Vietnamese mother of a good friend and learns how the crime affected—and continues to affect—the still close-knit neighborhood. The more she finds out, the greater the threat of violence becomes, not only for the long-time neighborhood residents, but even for Maggie herself.