Madeleine Apkarian has been cancelled. On the heels of a raucous public spectacle, she is terminated from professorship at a top tier university. Maddie flees Boston, determined to save her career. Traveling to Hayden's Ridge, she hopes to gain access to one of America's most private colonial homes and its unseen archives, much to the chagrin of the current owner, Samuel Hayden. He agrees to let her catalogue historic documents-nothing more. But when they stumble across a long-forgotten portrait of an eighteenth-century lady who may have had ties to Thomas Jefferson, he finally shares more. As secrets of the Hayden family's past are revealed, the enigma of Samuel's ancestry grows. Their historical journey takes them to old letters, to the Virginia of the distant past-to Monticello-and just when Maddie thinks she has escaped the present into history, she finds the two worlds are deeply entwined. Resolved to unravel the secrets of the house, both Maddie and Samuel may get more than they ever expected-from the past and the present.