It has been one year that nineteen-year-old Kimi Wabinaw, a legal assistant working part-time for a Gaylord, Michigan lawyer, graduated from Mancelona High School. Although she plans to enroll at the University of Michigan downstate to become a social worker, she is constrained by four problems. 1) Kimi's mother, Colleen, suffers from a crippling illness and is addicted to pain medication and tranquilizers. 2) Her nine-year-old sister needs care. 3) Her father, a native American, who owns a real estate business, is often gone showing clients vacation properties along Lake Michigan. And 4) She is falling in love with Joseph Porter.
A sudden tragedy falls over the family when Kimi's little sister, Aiyana, dies after falling into the pond behind their family home, leaving all her plans for a future shattered because she believes her father, Denny Wabinaw, killed her little sister. Although determined to get enough evidence to bring her father to justice, Kimi soon discovers it is not without risks. Suspicions, fear, and blame are the poisonous spears that now target her father, but as luck would have it, they always miss, leaving more questions unanswered. Paradoxically, some of these questions lead her to her neighbors, the Evangelistas, an excentric old immigrant couple from Sicily that lives across the street in an old farmhouse where the wife, Viola, makes herbal remedies, lotions, and potions to sell to locals for whatever ails them. Kimi suspects they know something about Aiyana's death, and she's about to find out, believing they will affirm her suspicion about her father.
Amidst all this chaos, Kimi and Joe realize their deep love for each other. Joe, a tall and stunningly handsome native American with piercing dark eyes and thick curly black hair, who runs his boss's store, Hank's Hardware, in Gaylord, wants to get married as soon as possible. Besides managing the store, Joe is a dreamer and a poet. His poems are mainly about his native people, the Chippewa, who lived along Lake Michigan near the Sleeping Bear Dunes. And although he sympathizes with Kimi about her suspicions concerning her father, he believes that Denny Wabinaw is innocent.
But nevertheless, Joe helps Kimi by leaving no stone unturned to make her father own up to what he did. Providentially, she realizes that time is on her side when events unfold shortly after Aiyana's death, revealing the whole ugly truth but not without the twisted trail of lies and subterfuge dragging even the neighbors of their small town, Pine Cove, into turmoil, the consequences of which are spread over all the local news.
As the puzzle pieces of their chaos come together, Kimi finds answers to why her sister died in the most unlikely place. Will this vindicate her father? Will she finally be able to pick up the pieces of her family and begin a new life with Joe?