Book excerpt: "In 1957, Mary Alice McDonnell was a rebellious teenager in love with a rich Yankee boy, Michael Harrison, who had just moved to her small Virginia mountain town - much to the chagrin of her strict God-fearing mother, Lavinia. By 2004, Mary Alice has become a sixty-three-year-old spinster biology teacher who hasn't spoken to her mother in over forty years." "When Lavinia dies, Mary Alice's graduate-student niece, Claire, inherits the family house and moves to Virginia, bringing along a deep curiosity about her family's dark past, as well as news of the long-lost Michael Harrison."--BOOK JACKET.