THE RECKONING

A woman on the run in the 1980s takes refuge in a Northern California haven she comes to realize is overrun by secrets of its own.

Arriving in moody, fog-covered Humboldt County after a four-day trip on a Greyhound bus, Renata Drake hopes the isolation of Garberville will grant her anonymity. She’s fled Washington, D.C., and a past shrouded in moral ambiguity: something violent, something righteous, something she won’t reveal, maybe even to herself. Taking a janitorial job at the Southern Humboldt Community Hospital and seeking shelter in the town library, Renata, or Nattie, as she becomes known, tries to live invisibly. But she can’t ignore the secrets others in the small town try to hide, and her curiosity about the tales of three missing girls over the past three years haunts Nattie just like the specter of her sister, Josie. The town’s illicit economy, as part of California’s Emerald Triangle of cannabis production, has been both a lifeline and a liability. Funding that undergirded the town infrastructure is threatened with the increased presence of law enforcement. The enforcers, in turn, are more concerned with prosecuting offenders than preserving human life, and the advent of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting is clearly seeking to wipe out the whole operation. Nattie’s compelled to do her own investigating when she sees her new boss, Doris, receive word that they’ve found 16-year-old Jennie Dayton dead. Reordering her priorities, she’s determined to make inroads into the crimes while trying to keep her own past under wraps.

This series debut, more smoke than fire, promises a reckoning but keeps much in reserve.