John Reimer, minister of Lakeview Mennonite Church in Chicago, has survived several attempts on his life while looking into a gruesome killing at North Pond. He has also just lost his spouse. Everyone from district minister Waldo Wedel to Lakeview’s church moderator Nancy Huefflinger thinks they know what is best for John. What he can’t deny is that his extracurricular activities and tendency to question authority, including that of cops and aldermen, has both friends and detractors worried.

A committee sends John into bucolic exile in central Kansas. It’s an enforced sabbatical, and John sees it as coercion. As it turns out, Marion Hills, located on the edge of the Flint Hills, is about to have its peaceful mask rudely torn off.

Marion Hills is an affluent Mennonite community, comfortable, slightly decadent, maybe borderline Peyton Place. Its economic power, industrial behemoth Halston Industries, has diversified into agricultural technology and aerospace. After the mysterious death of one of the community’s most affluent citizens, a private equity mogul close to John’s own family, John once again finds himself sucked into a whirling maelstrom of intrigue—and forced to reckon with his own character, his faith, and a place he thought he knew.