The story begins in the sixties in a country town in Alabama. Marcie recounts a series of devious events and twisted fate that ultimately ends in murder. At the age of sixteen, she accepts a job working for an old acquaintance of her parents. Hired as the caretaker for the acquaintanceas ailing mother, she soon discovers that she is his forced lover as well. Feeling liberated after the motheras death, she finds that her plans are quickly altered through her fear of being pregnant. While attempting to run away to relatives, she is befriended on the plane by a traveling missionary. He convinces her that he is able to solve her dilemma. Rather than being the missionary he portrays, he turns out to be a miserably unhappy member of a drug and prostitute cartel. Her situation worsens and she finds herself in another country trying to survive.