Superstition, mysticism, and religion weave like tangled vines through the tales of Amelia's newly discovered ancestry. As a widow struggling to sustain herself and her ten-year-old son, Amy's modest life is tragically disrupted when a dubious lawyer determines her late mother, adopted at birth, was the estranged daughter of the recently deceased Lexington McClary. Although the net worth of the once enormous estate is petty, Amy decides to travel several hundred miles to attend the funeral, in the hope of at least learning a semblance of her newfound ancestry. After the interment, alone in the secluded rural cemetery, Amy trips and bashes her head against a tombstone, suffering a coma and complications requiring medical care and convalescence for several months. While precariously recovering, Amy is visited in the depth of nights by a mysterious woman who tells stories of Amy's maternal grandparents, their families, and acquaintances. The tales of her ancestors reach back nearly a century and include their immigration from Ireland to New York City and their migration westward to Indian Territory. Poignant remembrances of her own life and the altered world into which she regains consciousness portray the unconquerable but elusive human spirit, confronting failure in the wake of triumph, tragedy dispelling romance, madness shaming war of its glory, and the cruelty of murder in defiance of reason.