Bitterroot

A forensic artist confronts a crime against her own family, while MAGA politics, racism and violence rage in a small town in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho.

Set in the fictional town of Steeplejack, nestled in the Bitterroot Mountains, Hazel Mackenzie provides law enforcement with sketch art and victim reconstruction following suspected crimes. Trouble strikes twice when her husband dies in an accident and then soon after, her gay twin brother Kento is shot by a member of Steeplejack's growing anti-LBGTQ community during a gender reveal party for his child.

Secrets boil up. First an ugly secret about her late husband. Then Hazel finds letters written by her great-grandfather during the second world war when as a first-generation Japanese-American serving in the US military, the rest of the family was interned in a prison-like camp. Now, some eighty years later, the same racism and prejudice threaten to strip Kento and his husband of their basic rights to their baby. Hazel must now confront her own intergenerational trauma as she battles for herself, her brother, and a town that has been torn apart by hate.