Meet Samantha Beck and Rebecca Nisha—two women born twenty-five years and hundreds of miles apart, yet joined together by a shocking family ritual. When Samantha discovers the remains of an ancient tribe in Pennsylvania, she expects to at last prove her grandmother’s Native American ancestry and to make a name for herself as a budding archaeologist. She does not expect to make an enemy and a lover of a fellow descendant—son of Rebecca Nisha—who unwittingly wears a necklace made of his dead mother’s bones.

As the novel unfolds, alternating between Samantha’s story and Rebecca’s twenty-five years before, Samantha becomes more and more determined to discover the devastating mystery that estranged Rebecca’s wealthy Pennsylvania Dutch father from her half-Native American son. Samantha gradually uncovers a troubling secret and decides to risk everything—love and career—to restore harmony to Rebecca’s family.