Sent by the governor to investigate hate crimes in rural Campbell County, Mary Crow finds that hateful words have incited many crimes, and not just against the LGBTQ community. As Mary learns that a number of people have either disappeared or wound up dead, young Chase Buchanan comes forward with a tale about his sister, Samantha. She's gone missing, and Chase insists that his stepfather has sold the girl to get rid of her. The stepfather seems nice enough, though, and Mary chalks the story up to the boy's dislike of his newly blended family and an overactive imagination.
Probing deeper, Mary and Detective Victor Galloway search the county crime statistics and find that the petty crime rate is strangely low, while the murdered and missing cases are spiking. Most puzzling is the fact that so many people die or simply vanish along Highway 74, a road the local Latinos call la carretera de delores. The road of sorrows.
Mary tries as hard, but finds the dots hard to connect in a conservative mountain county suspicious of strangers. After a farewell dinner with Victor Galloway, she winds up her investigation unsatisfied, but hoping she can come up with a report that will mollify the governor. She's driving east, along Highway 74, when the road of sorrows suddenly lives up to its name. A wiggling shadow and a plaintive cry lure Mary into a web of unspeakable evil that stretches from the coves of Campbell County to faraway countries, where innocence is sold to the highest bidder.
