In the summer of 1882, when Isadora Lugo learns that her father has been convicted of murder, she reluctantly travels home for the first time in ten years. At age seventeen she’d fled her troubled life in Los Angeles to serve Christ in India as Sister Ria, never planning to return. Yet as a child, Isadora had promised her dying mother that in times of trouble she would care for her father, the eccentric Don Maximiato Lugo. And now trouble has indeed come. Following a haphazard investigation and a speedy trial for the brutal killing of a local prostitute, Don Maximiato awaits his fate in the family hacienda, sinking into madness.

Believing it is too late to save her father’s life, Sister Ria urges him to confess his sins and save his soul. But he only mocks her efforts. For her own peace of mind, Sister Ria investigates the case in the side streets and back alleys of Mexican Los Angeles. But every clue she finds hints at something darker and more sinister and weakens her faith, as her very life is threatened by an ominous unseen figure that shadows her every move.