"There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson."—George Saunders

When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school research project, he runs across a series of articles in the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young and involving the secret Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice. Along with his newly discovered half-brother, Rudd becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.

As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd piece together his memory and together they forge a bond unique to survivors of terrible tragedy. Desperate to protect Lyndi but still caught in a web of secrecy and confusion, Rudd short-circuits their Mormon wedding ceremony, plunging them both deeper into the violent past by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim of the 100-year-old murder.