Caleb Zelic, profoundly deaf since early childhood, has always lived on the outside - watching, picking up telltale signs people hide in a smile, a cough, a kiss. When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can't do it alone. Caleb and his troubled friend Frankie, an ex-cop, start with one clue: Scott, the last word the murder victim texted to Caleb....

A woman accosts Caleb in the street, asking for help. Minutes later, she's dead. The search for her killer will take Caleb back to his hometown of Resurrection Bay, where all it takes is a single spark to ignite an inferno of violence.

Words and sign language depict children at the zoo discovering how to sign the names of various animals and how to tell time.

After moving with her mother and deaf brother to Grandma's small Georgia town in the 1960s, Alice copes with feelings of isolation by befriending the elderly black woman who lives next door.