On the last evening of summer in 2013, five shots rang out in a part of northeast Denver known as the Holly. Long a destination for African American families fleeing the Jim Crow South, the area had become an "invisible city" within a historically white metropolis. The shooter, Terrance Roberts, was a revered anti-gang activist. Rubinstein reconstructs the events that left a local gang member paralyzed and Roberts facing the possibility of life in prison. The result is a multigenerational saga of race and politics that runs from the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter, exploring the porous boundaries between a city's elites and its most disadvantaged citizens.