In the long anticipated companion to the award-winning Red Cloud Pistachios, the small rural town of Red Cloud, Arizona becomes the focus of murder and greed. Someone is buying up vast acres of land in the valley. But with the country in the midst of a deep recession and a killing drought, it makes no sense. And then a well digger for one of the area farms makes a terrible discovery: They're not buying land. They're buying what's under it. These Barren Hills is the story of the rise and fall of a town; the brutality of corporate greed, and the deadly consequences for those who get in the way.