A reporting trip that set out to investigate the causes behind a mysterious childhood cancer cluster turned into a valuable lesson in embracing a truer kind of complexity — not the twists and turns of a mystery novel’s plot, but the unpredictable emotions that guide real people’s lives.

In a small Nevada town once plagued by childhood cancer, families still search for answers to what caused the cluster of cases. Some suspected environmental causes, but so little is still understood about pollutants and cancer.