In the early 1980s more than forty black children were murdered in Atlanta, their bodies found strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted. Toni Cade Bambara spent 12 years researching those events and the result is a novel of profound scope and impact. It focuses on a single black family whose son goes missing just as the abductions being to be reported. As the distraught parents search frantically for their child, the full spectrum of Atlanta's political, social and cultural life is revealed, illuminating the complex issues of race and class bedevilling the city.