After Brandi Monroe, a soon to be freshman at Goodton High, appears missing during an end-of-summer beach party her friends suspect she's swimming. But Brandi's body is discovered the next morning drowned in the ocean and David Miller, a single father struggling to raise two teenagers since his wife Mary's cancer death, realizes a boy, Joey Young, may have been involved in this young girl's death. Then David's daughter, Adele, asks to date him!

David uncovers more than a homicide as Goodton residents discover their place within the Diamond Party, a system uniting good people with diabolical ones to plan their community. The party has fortified four sides of life within a secret hierarchy and David's children are left to pass into adulthood too early. In this coming of age tale, a single father's bravery makes him the victim of circumstance when good folks fail to stand against boys taking advantage of girls, men manipulating goodwill, and a society relying on evil to get things done.