Working alone in the vast reaches of the New South Wales bush, park ranger Cal Nyx finds a body. When the remains are identified as someone she once knew, detectives view her as a possible culprit. Then they find the dark blot on her past.

Cal, a tough and ingenious protagonist, isn’t the most sociable of characters. Prone to putting people offside, albeit unwittingly, she works in her own desperate way to find the murderer, establish her innocence and overcome the stigma of a complicated history.

When another suspect disappears and Cal gets dire news about her only living relative, she's forced to make an onerous choice: follow a shadowy prospect into an isolated forest or do right by her family?