Rosie Moon is a sixteen year old farm girl growing up in the southernmost foothills of Appalachia in Northwest Alabama. Her story begins in the summer of 1969 when relatives come to spend the summer in her small mountain community of Ben Johnson Ridge. She takes a special interest in her youngest cousin, a ten year old girl named Janie Noble; a child filled with grief, anger and guilt after witnessing her father's suicide. During that passionate season of free love Rosie and Janie become almost inseparable as tragedy and danger force them into a family bond of survival when a mostly benevolent ancestral ghost is unleashed into their lives. This long-dead ancestor reveals himself as a medical doctor who practiced after the Civil War, and leads them on a precarious treasure hunt. The girls are forced to seek refuge and embark on an adventurous journey in the summer of 1970, where they learn no good deed goes unpunished, yet erudition eludes the lesson. As one good deed follows another, the girls become entangled in legalities, finding their actions potentially libel, with possible criminal prosecution, all the while still facing Doc Campbell in vividly detailed dreams during the late night side of morning.