Private Investigator Bay Tanner is hired by a young mother desperate to locate her estranged family. Joline Eastman's daughter is dying of leukemia, and all other sources for a bone-marrow transplant have been exhausted. A yellowing photograph and a handful of wartime letters are the only clues she has to offer. But it's what she's not willing to share that may hold the ultimate solution to saving her daughter's life.

Meanwhile, Bay has her own family to worry about. A phone call from Lavinia Smalls, her aging father's companion and caretaker, sends her rushing to the hospital. A few, whispered words, uttered in a moment of semi-conscious confusion, shatter her world and launch Bay on a quest that will redefine everything she thought she knew about herself.

Battling time, Bay and her late husband's brother, sheriff 's sergeant Red Tanner, search desperately for Joline's missing family, only to discover that an old murder and a haunted woman from Bay's past may hold the key to everything.