Hetty Stanley was a schoolteacher. Hetty Stanley was a prudish spinster. Hetty Stanley was a murderer. Hetty Stanley has been dead for more than a century.

Dane Butler is doing his best and his best isn’t enough, but a little luck puts him into an inherited home that shares a property line with a woman and her son. Winona and her son Casey are no better off than Dane, forcing the strangers to rely on one another.

One day, Dane looks up from his computer at the sound of Winona shouting in through his door. Her four-year-old son is missing—no boots and no coat, January in Minnesota. Hours pass. Police scour the woods and begin pointing fingers at the only plausible suspects, but one high-ranking officer knows the painful history. Children have been disappearing from the old schoolhouse property for decades, and although it is impossible, there’s only one likelihood: Hetty Stanley.

To save Casey, Dane and Winona must find the link to Hetty and follow it, no matter how impossible the route seems or what trials they might face and what stakes they must overcome.