When an Amish teenager disappears, it's only the beginning... Becca slogged through a deep drift and stumbled toward the front of the shanty. A padlock hung from the hasp, but it wasn't engaged. Shaking with cold, she shoved open the door. The interior was dark and hushed. The air smelled of kerosene and fish. Out of the wind, it was so quiet she could hear the ice creaking beneath her feet. Her breath puffing out in clouds of white vapour, she pulled out the candle and matches she'd brought from home and lit the wick. The light revealed a small interior with plywood walls and a shelf covered with fish blood and a smattering of silver scales. A lantern sat on the shelf. A coil of rope hung on the wall... Three teenagers have vanished from Ohio's Amish country. The only thing they have in common, other than their religion, is they are keen to leave the Plain Life. Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is called in to consult by Agent John Tomasetti as her Amish roots will be invaluable in an investigation involving this sectarian society. They travel to the small town of Monongahela Falls to investigate the latest disappearance that of seventeen-year-old Annie King. The only evidence left behind is a satchel and a pool of blood. The case moves closer to home for Kate when a young relative, Sadie Miller, vanishes. With her own past resonating, Kate delves into the lives of the missing teens. Soon, a sinister pattern emerges along with a vital clue that changes everything. While following up on a lead, Kate makes an appalling discovery and unearths a secret no one could have imagined — thrusting her into a fight to the death with a merciless killer.

A rainy night, an Amish father returning home with his three children, a speeding car hurtling toward them out of nowhere. What at first seems like a tragic, but routine car accident suddenly takes on a more sinister cast as evidence emerges that nothing about the crash is accidental. But who would want to kill an Amish deacon and two of his children? He leaves behind a grieving widow and a young son who clings to life in the intensive care wing of a hospital, unable to communicate. Desperate to find out who killed her best friend's husband and why, Kate begins to suspect she is not looking for a reckless drunk, but instead is on the trail of a cold blooded killer in the heart of Painter's Mill. It is a search that takes her on a chilling journey into the darkest reaches of the human heart and strikes at the heart of everything she has ever believed about the Amish culture into which she was born.