Cilla, a former child star who has found more satisfying work as a restorer of old houses, has come to her grandmother's Shenandoah Valley farmhouse, tools at her side, to rescue it from ruin. In the attic, she finds a cache of unsigned letters suggesting that her grandmother was pregnant when she died and that the father was a local married man. When Cilla becomes the target of a series of intimidating acts and a frightening, violent assault, her neighbor, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer, steps in to help her sort out who is targeting her and why.