"Small-town Appalachia doesn't have a lot going for it, but it's where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he's chosen to return to die. At eighteen, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories...

During a raging snowstorm, a deputy rescues a teenager stumbling along the side of a highway. Battered and starving, the boy reveals only his name -- Jaxon with an X. Ten years earlier, six-year-old Jaxon Lathan disappeared from a small North Carolina mountain town. The sheriff thought he had solved the crime, but the boy's return leads to a house of secrets, a mass grave, and the horror of missed opportunities. As the victims are identified one-by-one,...