While dealing with his Parkinson's disease diagnosis, Russian detective Arkady Renko agrees to search for an acquaintance's missing daughter whom he discovers was an anti-Putin activist, as the country's leaders begin to plot an invasion of Ukraine.

Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, is struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother. After decades away from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands...