After weeks of fire danger warnings and several wildfire flare-ups, the residents of Sockeye County, Washington, are on edge. When a fire threatens the Imogene Museum, curator Meredith Morehouse realizes the frequency and increasing size of the conflagrations aren’t as random as they seem.

Meredith already has her hands full with a brand new endowment for shoring up the Imogene’s crumbling foundation, plus the imminent arrival of the most valuable collection that the museum has scored to date. And Meredith’s significant other, the rugged Pete Sills, wants another kind of date—a non-negotiable wedding date.

Can Meredith and Pete and Sheriff Marge Stettler stop the arsonist before their tinder-dry community goes up in flames?

Jerusha Jones lives in a small town in the west end of the Columbia River Gorge. When she grows up, she fully intends to be a feisty old lady. In the meantime, she regularly maxes out her library's lending limit, has happily declared a truce with the clover in the lawn, but is fanatical about sealing up cracks in her old house, armed with a caulking gun. Due to the number of gaps she has yet to locate, however, she has also perfected her big spider shriek. Jerusha loves wool socks, Pink Lady apples with crunchy peanut butter, feather pillows, scenery of breathtaking grandeur, and weather just cool enough to require a sweater, all of which are plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. She is eternally grateful to have escaped the corporate world with its relentless, mind-numbing meetings and now writes (or doodles or fantasizes or cogitates or stares out the window or whatever you want to call it) full time.