In 1894, twelve-year-old Jean Wainwright, an orphan who lives with her Aunt Constance, agrees to spend the summer sorting old family papers for Mr. Thiel, a benefactor of Aunt Constance's school and the widower of her girlhood friend, Irene Callender. Jean soon discovers a mystery surrounding Irene's death, and a bewildering hostility between the cold, taciturn Mr. Thiel and the charming Enoch Callender, Irene's brother, who lives nearby with his wife and children. And Jean further discovers that she is somehow connected to the mystery, putting her life in danger.
