For Sharon McCone, when one door opens, another shuts. In the midst of celebrating a joyous wedding, she gets word that her father has died. The news leads her to the rituals of death: the scattering of ashes, the sharing of grief, the sorting through a loved one's belongings. But for Sharon McCone the last of those acts leads to a discovery that will change everything...

The existence of a legal document, hinting at a family secret deliberately withheld from McCone, provokes a violent breach between McCone and her mother. It drives McCone to search for her family's roots, particularly those of her Shoshone great-grandmother. This emotionally fueled search takes her to Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation and, eventually, to a remote and sparsely populated county in northern California. There, obsessed with her own problems, she walks into a deadly fight between Indians trying to preserve their sacred lands and a high-powered resort developer.

Soon McCone is drawn into a conspiracy that includes the attempted murder of an activist lawyer and threats on her own life. No one is talking--and McCone must learn to listen to the silence: the questions carefully avoided; the pauses that point to a lie; the hesitation when emotions block the disclosure of a vital fact.

Now, her fears mounting, her anger growing, McCone enters a dark inner place, dogged by an identity crisis--and a killer. An elusive adversary wants her to stop her search, and maybe she should. After all, the price for the whole truth--a tale of shattered love, bigotry, and homicide-- may be the forfeiting of everything she believes...a fresh start...or the ignominious end that a bullet can bring.