Los Ange­les. 1928. Oil, oranges, and the site of the C. C. Julian Petro­le­um stock scan­dal, a Ponzi scheme to rival any in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. As one of the scheme’s vic­tims, Ohio court offi­cer turned reluc­tant sleuth Sarah Kauf­man is in the city to attend the tri­al of the per­pe­tra­tors — par­tic­u­lar­ly the ​“friend” who con­vinced her to invest and gave fuel to the already bub­bling anti-Semit­ic sen­ti­ment sur­round­ing the case. Still reel­ing from the KKK mur­ders she helped solve in Ten­nessee, how­ev­er, Sarah also plans to use the trip to Cal­i­for­nia to unwind. She has no desire for any addi­tion­al Hol­ly­wood-type dra­ma. But when a Mex­i­can woman she bare­ly knows ends up dead, her plans are thrown upside down. Sud­den­ly she is thrust into a tri­al by fire — one that shat­ters her sense of self and leads her to dis­cov­er a dark secret upon which a part of L.A. was built.