When seventeen-year-old Alex starts dating Cole, a new boy at her high school, her two closest friends increasingly mistrust him as the relationship grows more serious.

When Meri Beckley looks at the peaceful Chicago streets, she feels pride in the era of unprecedented hope and prosperity over which the governor presides. But when her mother is killed, Meri suddenly has questions that no one else seems to be asking. And when she tries to uncover her mother's state of mind in her last weeks, she finds herself drawn into a secret world with a history she didn't know existed. Faced with a choice between accepting the...