Sick and tired of playing second-fiddle to her baseball-star younger brother, fifteen-year-old Kate Owens can't wait to escape for the summer to Shady Oaks, her grandparents' farm in the Ottawa Valley. But when she gets there, Kate learns that the farm has been put up for sale. Then the discovery of a mysterious letter written by her great-aunt seventy years ago launches Kate on a troubling journey into her family's history. Haunted by ghostly presences, Kate struggles to unravel the clues to the past and to find some way of saving the farm. Although she is drawn to both of the young farmhands also summering at Shady Oaks, Kate isn't certain that she can trust them enough to help. She soon begins to feel overwhelmed by the tentacles of the past. In the gripping climax of the story, past and present briefly intertwine and Kate learns to rely on her own strengths and instincts.