When a disgraced businessman is nearly decapitated in a seedy restaurant, the blood trail leads reporter Luke Murphy to a series of dark secrets, concealed for decades in the New Mexico desert.

Luke Murphy returned to Farmington, New Mexico to care for his ailing father, but a year later, his old man is dead, and Luke has stuck around. Working for the local newspaper, he's quickly learning that reporting the news in his old hometown often means reading between the lines of what people are willing to share with him on the record and off. But there's nothing like a murder to get people talking...

While covering a crime scene on the outskirts of town, Luke unwittingly stumbles onto a story forty years in the making. Whispered secrets suggest a cover-up spearheaded by the town's former mayor, a conspiracy involving a hometown hero, and a growing scandal known to just a handful of people – including Luke's late father. The farther Luke drills down, the harder the town's power-players fight to conceal the truth. It's a story as old as print, a tale of politics, greed, and murder, simmering under the hot sun in the American Southwest.