Karen Brown's most hypnotic novel to date is gothic-inflected psychological suspense that unmasks the secret desires of a young woman with a mystical gift.

On the family homestead where she grew up, Martha Mary saw ghosts. As a young woman, she hopes to distance herself from those spirits by escaping to an inland college town. There she is absorbed by a budding romance, relieved by separation from an unstable sister, and disinterested in the flyers seeking information about a young woman who has disappeared―until one Indian summer afternoon when the missing woman appears beneath Martha's apartment window, wearing a winter coat, her hair coated with ice.