Margaret Lawrence introduces her unforgettable heroine, Hannah Trevor, whose disregard for convention sets her apart from the other women of the small town of Rufford, Maine. Yet as a midwife, Hannah is intimately involved in the lives of people simultaneously capable of great joy and deeply scarred by a bloody war of revolution.

Now, in the midst of a merciless winter, an abomination has occurred: a young Rufford wife and mother has been raped and murdered in her home. Few knew the tormented victim well, but she named her three attackers in a horrified letter of accusation written before she died. And one of the accused is Daniel Josselyn - a wealthy man of honor, a wounded war veteran, and Hannah's one-time lover, the father of her illegitimate daughter.

A savage crime has touched Hannah's world, impelling her to join her dear, damaged friend, local constable Will Quaid, in his investigation.