Seventeen-year-old Callie Quinn's vacation is off to a terrible start. Her parents have forced her to spend the summer before her senior year of high school with an elderly aunt in Deerville, Pennsylvania, where there's nothing to do but watch old Westerns on TV and read the classics.
But soon, a mystery catches Callie's attention: the drowning suicide of a pregnant teen during the 1940s. Haunted by dreams of the girl, Callie realizes the story isn't what it appears to be. Why would a teen bent on suicide make a blanket for a baby who wouldn't survive?
For help, Callie turns to her only friend in Deerville, another outsider named Brian. Little by little, he and Callie get closer to the mystery of the girl's death, deep into the prejudices of the 1940s. They also become closer with each other.
As Callie begins to open up about her past to Brian, she is forced to face hard truths-not only about a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight, but also the turbulent personal events which led to Callie's exile to Deerville in the first place.