Since her mother's death, Joan Patee has kept the peace between her wayward brother, Denny, and her strong-willed father. Now confronted with her own troubles--a marriage strained by distance and the desire to have a child--Joan discovers that Denny is far worse off than she imagined. He's hatched a moneymaking scheme involving artifacts found in unmarked graves that may date to the Civil War. Pulled between the family she has and the one she would like to begin, Joan is drawn into a spiral of shady dealings and peculiar town secrets, some dangerously close to her heart.