Coming of age in the neighborhood of Pasadena, California during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and friend Alex dream of lives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Their struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of an American cultural revolution unites them early on, until the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything. Decades later, Rebecca's haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth...

Nan Vining, a Pasadena homicide cop and struggling single mother is a woman determined to find the brutal madman, T.B. Mann, who left her for dead a year ago. On the job, Nan breaks rules and steals evidence, building a case file based on the dead certainty that T. B. Mann is obsessed with women who wear uniforms or carry guns, that he hunts them and kills them and then adorns them with a pearl necklace.