A forty-five year old investment banker in Boston, Graden Wells travels to Colorado to sell 50 acres of land on a lake north of Durango, a site where his grandfather built a cabin in 1906 and where he later killed himself. Convinced that his father's fatal car crash was also a suicide, Graden is anxious to discover if self-destruction runs in his blood. Then Graden meets an attractive college freshman called Kate DuVal who is even more obsessed by genealogy. The couple slide into an affair, and Graden falls in love with Kate, but begins to feel that her reliance on family history has crossed the line. So empathetic is Kate with the lives of her forebears, especially the women, that she writes a chronicle about them and even feels she knows them. The boundary between the past and the present becomes blurred; is Kate simply obsessed or is history repeating itself? When Kate takes up with another man, Graden stalks her. But suddenly she goes missing and then tragically dies, the victim of mysterious accident. Was Kate riding to find Graden? Is Graden responsible for her death? Page Edwards, a recognized master in his portrayal of female character, tells an engaging tale of a woman consumed by her past.