Until the phone calls came at three o'clock on a November morning, theGolds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was nosurprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, beganshowing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelongfriends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily is dead—shot with a gun herbeloved and devoted Chris pilfered from his father's cabinet as part of anapparent suicide pact—leaving two devastated families stranded in thedark and dense predawn, desperate for answers about an unthinkable act andthe children they never really knew. From New York Times bestsellingauthor Jodi Picoult—one of the most powerful writers in contemporaryfiction—comes a riveting, timely, heartbreaking, and terrifying novelof families in anguish and friendships ripped apart by inconceivableviolence.