If terrorism begins at home, then school bullies are the first wave...
Thirteen year-old Magdalene Barrows is still reeling from her brother Michael's disappearance the previous summer. Now another child has vanished. There's been a shooting in a second grade classroom. Eight-year-old Katie has a ring of bruises around her arm. And Magdalene believes the bullies are to blame.
It is nine months after 9/11, and Mondauk County is on edge and seething with secrets. Magdalene's father, the recently sober assistant DA, has been assigned the prosecution of the second grade shooter and (bowing to political pressure) the boy's mother. Magdalene, who ended the school year with her second suicide attempt, uncovers connections between the school bullies, Katie's father, and the widow of a firefighter slain on 9/11 that may link the school shooting to the disappearances. But to confront bully chieftain Stevie Rich, she will have to enter the lawless recesses of Paradise Lakes Trailer Park.
Magdalene must race against impending indictments, as well as reoccurring dreams that threaten to reveal her role in her brother's fate, in order to rescue Katie and solve a murder before the bullies make her the next citizen of Mondauk County to disappear.
