In this book, Stevenson explores the long-simmering resentment within LA's black community that ultimately erupted in April 1992 by focusing on an preceding event that encapsulated the growing racial and social polarization in the city over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s: the 1991 shooting of a fifteen-year old African American girl, Latasha Harlins, by a Korean grocer who suspected Harlins of shoplifting.