Elaine Benson, a successful novelist who let love in the person of an unreliable screenwriter jettison her career, is now divorced, broke, and on her way to a so-called primitive, untamed northern forest on Canada's Lake Muskoka to interview for a job. Elderly Miss Moira Madison of the fabulously rich Canadian family wishes to write her memoirs. Miss Madison isn't interested in a bestseller; she wants to leave a record of her life and, most specifically, of her years with the Canadian Army Nursing Sisters of World War II. Her service in the European theaters was filled with triumphs and bitter losses and forever shaped her life. Settling into the family "cottage" and what remains of a lifestyle long gone, Elaine reconnects with her love of researching the past—until she discovers that the first such writer hired died under suspicious circumstances. Could her project stir someone to murder?