A Mexican truck driver transporting illegal migrants into the United States is shot dead in Arizona by a U.S. Border Patrol officer. Thirty years later, Hope Lacy, a high-profile television and current affairs presenter from a prominent Chicago family, loses her mother in an air crash. While going through her mother's personal effects, Hope discovers that her entire privileged life has been lie, that the woman she always believed to be her mother, was not her natural mother at all. With her lover an Illinois state senator, and her stepfather a wealthy construction industry magnate, Hope is well connected at the highest levels. Using her influence in the media, she embarks on a desperate search for the truth about her origins. But her road to discovery becomes increasingly dangerous when she finds deceit, betrayal, corruption and even murder lying around almost every corner.