CBC journalist recounts her life growing up on the streets and her growing career in activism then social work then journalism. Along the way, she recounts the lives, deaths and disappearances of women who went missing along the Highway of Tears and in Vancouver's downtown east side, what the police did about them (usually fuck all), and how families and activists tried to bring the cause of missing and murdered indigenous women into the public eye, plus a handful of largely failed and ignored inquiries that mostly say racism isn't a problem. She also talks a lot about her own career, and all the institutional resistance to even hearing that a problem exists.

Sterritt worries that talking about her own life will take the story away from the missing women, but she's got such an even hand at storytelling and a clear voice that she makes it work as different angles on the same story. If anything, I felt like she skimmed over her own years on the streets (likely having no interest in baring her personal tragedies for the world to see). I don't think much of the material was new to me, but it's put together as a compelling story with immense compassion for the victims, the families, and the handful of people in positions of power who tried to make it work.

The ending was more optimistic than I expected, with Sterritt talking about how much institutional change she's noticed in just the last few years. Canadian society might not be on to solutions yet, but at least people seem to know there's a problem now.