Bernadette Engstrom is born with innate skills to promote spirit and defend nature; a life requiring great resourcefulness should she choose to follow that path. Her childhood is filled with disquietude due to a mentally ill mother who hates Bernadette for being a girl. Fortunately, there is joy in Bernadette's young life, for she has a loving father and a mentor from whom she receives important tutelage to fight highly variable forces, both ordinary and extraordinary, which so often confront those who stand with honor. Her love of animals further cements her course and by the sides of animals she gives and gains strength.
As an adult, Bernadette's life becomes more complicated and secretive. While on a university work-study program in Europe, Bernadette saves a man from drowning following a car accident. She is forced to marry him, as this is the only means to protect her from the people inside and outside of his secretive organization. Although they become devoted spouses, and Bernadette finds much love and courage within the relationship, they spend most of their lives on separate continents. Only a few of her husband's associates are aware of the marriage. It is within this perceived social condition, as a single lonely woman, that Bernadette is stereotyped and viewed by others as a weaker and more vulnerable person, further emboldening forces against her.
In her mid-thirties, Bernadette begins working for a metal manufacturing company in their environmental department, a job she initially enjoys and feels compassionate about. It is when she accidentally discovers secrets within the company that her life is threatened. But what Bernadette has seen at her job isn't by itself a crime. Without understanding how the secrets fit into the larger picture at the company, she is unable to seek help from authorities. To complicate matters, EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) investigates the shipments of a particular waste for which Bernadette is responsible. EPA oddly zeros in on Bernadette, who is in a lower-level management role, with an intense surveillance program, attempting to arrest her alone, instead of looking at other key figures in the company.
Serious issues confront Bernadette, and she gives battle in creative and often amusing ways. She is an ordinary woman relying on her will and mind. It is her physical, emotional, and spiritual strength which makes her a formidable opponent for those who are dishonest and deadly.
What does Bernadette know? Did her secretive marriage lead her to commit wrong actions? Will she be able to fit together the puzzle of company secrets and enforcement activities before she is killed? Time is marching on and those threatening her life become more impatient as she thwarts their actions.
As desperate criminals take more aggressive action towards Bernadette, the reader will be rooting for her and wondering, how will she save herself.