When seven-year-old Virginia Applejack witnesses a brutal double murder, her life and the lives of everyone around her are changed forever. Across years and miles, lives are destroyed and hearts and minds broken. From the rough schoolyard of a Baltimore suburb and the wild parties of the city's underbelly to a harrowing look into the violent corners of the imagination, a picture unfolds - a frightening portrait leading inescapably to a lonely road in Northern California and a fateful end of a young woman looking for love...