"In a small rural town outside Seattle, Joanna, an Ethiopian girl adopted by a white fundamentalist Christian family, is found dead of hypothermia in her own backyard--setting in motion a gripping journey into the complexities of human emotion. How does it feel to be a child taken into a family that doesn't share her background, her religion, or the color of her skin? What does it mean to be a mother on trial for murder? And why would a lawyer choose...

The town of Lawrence in the Kaw River Valley in Kansas, two families the Grelliers and the Schapens have farmed the land for over one hundred and fifty years. Both families barely tolerate each other because the Schapens who belong to a fundamentalist church believes the Grelliers are godless heathens. Into this atmosphere comes Gina Haring, a Wiccan and a lesbian, who is the catalyst for a series of events that ends in tragedy and death.