In 1987, Kristina Bonner was the girl every other girl wanted to be, a slim, auburn-haired beauty with a bright future, a wealthy, indulgent father, and a straight-A average. Then she borrowed her father's classic 1956 Continental to go to her senior prom-and disappeared.
Sandeen is a writer, a self-styled investigative reporter, an espresso shop owner, an amiable gearhead, and a sucker for unsolved mysteries. After John Bonner exhausts every other avenue of investigation in the hope of finding his daughter, he turns to Sandeen, asking him to find his daughter, or failing that, determine her fate.
The inquiry takes Sandeen to the small, out-of-the-way town of Catalpa, Kansas. Its mysterious and unsavory past-particularly as it concerns Kristina Bonner-will lead Sandeen to unanswered questions, danger, and mayhem as he interviews those who don't want their pasts revisited nor their secrets exposed and then begins to corral the ones responsible for her unpleasant fate.