Betty, her sister and mother were all shopping at the mall when the shooting happened -- and although they all survived, none of them would be the same after. Betty watches her mother throw herself into activism and away from her family, while her outgoing sister becomes a shadow of her former self. Desperate for answers, Betty finds herself reaching out to the shooter's brother, but all it does is reveal that nothing in life is simple to understand....

In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor. As the community wrestles with the fallout, Bloomland interrogates social and cultural dysfunction in a nation where mass violence has become all too familiar.