A mysterious murder brings police officer Maik Briegand back to the place of his childhood: Lauchhammer. Together with the LKA investigator Annalena Gottknecht, Briegand begins to remove the secrets of the past layer by layer.

Maik Briegand had turned his back on his home in the center of Lower Lusatia, where his police career began before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the LKA investigator returns to solve the murder of a young girl - and is once again confronted with colleagues from his former precinct, his failed marriage, his family and his past. Inspector Annalena Gottknecht does not want to be drawn into Briegand's old addictions. But the more the energetic investigator opens up to the local people and the brittle beauty of Lusatia, the greater her understanding for her colleague becomes. Like the huge shovels of the mining excavators that patiently remove layer after layer to extract the lignite from the earth, the two investigators dig themselves into the case, which ultimately leads them decades into the past - back to Maik Briegand's youth and a traumatic experience.—rbb