Zehra Sharaf is the idolized teenage daughter of Afghan American parents who escaped the horrors of war in Afghanistan and resettled as refugees in Northern Virginia. Zehra is going to graduate from her prestigious high school with honors. She's going to go to Georgetown and then Harvard Law School. One day, the Sharafs boast, she might even be a Supreme Court Justice.

When Zehra's body is discovered in a car at the bottom of a canal, her family is shattered - and as the investigation unfolds, the illusion of their perfect teenage daughter is shattered as well. In the eyes of her Afghan community, Zehra was a rebel who had disgraced her family by running away with a boy. According to her friends, she was a young woman torn between her ultra-conservative community and her desire to live on her own terms. Soon everyone who hears about the case has their own certainty as to whether Zehra's death was a terrible accident-or whether the Sharafs are guilty of an honour crime against their own daughter.

Told through the voices surrounding the Sharafs, Good People traces the immigrant family's rags-to-riches rise; moves through the year leading up to Zehra's tragedy; and explores the aftermath as the twin forces of the police investigation and the court of public opinion draw battle lines between those who knew Zehra and her family best and those who think they know them...