It's a hot dry summer and a pall of smoke from the forest fires drifts over the lakeshore. Still, tourists and cottagers flock to Cullen Village, including the Borthwicks, who own Hazeldean, a treasured 100-year-old heritage cottage. Family matriarch Lois Borthwick, in a nearby care home, no longer recognizes any of her four children, each of whom has a decidedly different plan for the old place. The eldest, Donna, a successful local realtor married to a well-known MP, wants to tear it down and build anew. When Donna's lifeless body is found hanged from a pier, the death is ruled a suicide. Case closed. Or is it?

After a life-threatening incident with the Major Crimes Unit, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway has decided to put family before ambition and seek a quieter, safer life with her young son. She now runs the local RCMP detachment in the heart of cottage country, and protocol dictates that she has no reason to participate in the Borthwick investigation, which is being led by her former protegee, Izzy McBain. As more of the unlucky Borthwick clan succumb to foul play, however, Roxanne cannot help but be drawn in.