Quorum session, Hadley worries about her looming deadline for the cookbook she's writing, the pain her best friend is in, her depressed young housemate, and the Paducah mayoral race she's favored to win against her nemesis-corrupt businessman Nick Stoddard. Then she learns that fellow quilter Donna considers the death of a coworker to be suspicious.

Adding to her concerns, Hadley will meet the family of her beau, Detective Brandon Green, that night, and her younger sister, Jenny, will arrive for a visit, bringing three kinds of trouble with her.

But then bricks shatter Hadley's windows, transforming worry into danger.

Just when Hadley fears her burdens will cause her to crack up, people in and around Paducah die in what could become a major public health crisis.

She steels herself and enlists the services of private eye Garrett Hunt. They investigate the murders, but when her family's secrets emerge from her late mother's trunk, Hadley questions who she is and whether her future is doomed.