Joanna Hastings wants to escape from her life: from the high-pressure politics of a large computer company, from the drudgery of suburbia, from the emotional fall-out of a troubled teenage daughter. On impulse she quits her job, rents out her house in the city and takes possession of a run-down old shack deep in the woods of Northern Ontario. All she wants is to be left alone, to work in solitude and to recover some remnants of her shattered equilibrium. But in a town like Hope River, being left alone is a lot harder to achieve than a city-woman like Joanna realizes.
Unwillingly she becomes embroiled in the lives of her neighbors, an elderly widow and her troubled teenage granddaughter, who reminds Joanna too much of her own pain. At the same time Joanna becomes aware of unusual noises at her door, and flashes of deepest black in the woods. She is plagued by realistic dreams, of a teenage girl living with a brutal family in what appears to be her own cabin, circa 1930, depression era Ontario.
Then murder strikes at the heart of the little community and as the harsh winter storms close in and the mysterious dreams intensify Joanna realizes that not even death can end the troubles of a lost teenager.
