There are terrible secrets from generations past buried at Maidenwood. Medical student Julie Newcomb has returned to her family's decaying plantation—the site of so many painful childhood memories—to tend to her tyrannical grandmother, felled by a stroke. The fire of malevolence still burns in the cruel, despotic matriarch's eyes—yet, for Julie, a faint spark of redemption and second chances flickers in this hated, haunted place. But her hope—and her life—are seriously threatened by a nightmare reborn . . . and by the grim discovery on the lonely road to Maidenwood of the earth-browned skeletons of a mother and child.