Recent transplants to the small town of Chosen, New York, the Clares have not received the warmest welcome; once a thriving dairy farm, their home is haunted by the tragedy that left the former owner's three sons orphaned and adrift.

Late one winter afternoon, professor George Clare knocks on his neighbor's door with terrible news: he returned from work to find his wife, Catherine, murdered in their bed. Someone took an ax to her head while their three-year-old daughter, Franny, played alone in her room across the hall.

As one dark secret peels away to reveal others--and as the Clare marriage reveals itself to have a sinister darkness that rivals the farm's history--Elizabeth Brundage offers a rich and complex portrait of the scars that can haunt a community for generations and the dark longings inside each and every one of us that drive us to do inexplicable things.