After nearly dying on Blood Mountain, investigative reporter and crime writer Kate Adair has returned home to recover in a quiet lake community where grief and secrets lie close to the surface. She has the man she loves, a place to heal, and every reason to be grateful. What she does not have is a story. Resting has left her restless.
Then a chestnut oak is cut down on the property of Kate's elegant neighbor, Isobel Allen, and workers uncover the remains of a child sealed inside its hollow trunk. The boy vanished two years earlier. In the years since, the community has acknowledged the grief and moved on.
For Kate, the discovery is horrifying. The mystery of what happened to the boy is also the first thing in months that makes her feel alive.
Drawn back into the instincts that once defined her, Kate begins asking questions about the boy in the tree. What starts as private curiosity becomes an investigation into other missing boys, vanished medical records, damaged families, and a misogynistic desert group in Arizona called the Children of Erebus. The past has not been forgotten so much as absorbed-into family stories, local gossip, sealed files, Appalachian folklore, and the quiet bargains people make in order to keep living.
As Kate follows the trail from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the desert Southwest and back again, she risks more than her safety. She risks the fragile peace she has built with Simon, the trust of the people who have welcomed her home, and the recovery she has only begun to believe in. Solving the boy's murder may restore her purpose-or pull her into a darkness she's not strong enough to survive.