In the very white, very Christian world of Altlanta society in 1958, New York transplant Ruth decides not to tell her new high school friends and boyfriend that she is Jewish, but when a violent act rocks the city, Ruth must figure out where her loyalties lie.

Told in several voices, a group of Long Island high school seniors conspire to protect eighteen-year-old Jimmy after he brutally assaults two Salvadoran immigrants, until they begin to see the moral implications of Jimmy's actions and the consequences of being loyal to a violent bully.

Relates, from various points of view, events from the night of October 6, 1998, when twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was lured out of a Wyoming bar, savagely beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die.