When 24-year-old Annie Clairmont finds water damage in an old Victorian house she has inherited from her great-aunt Ginny Spenser in a small New York exurb, she and her mother are shocked to discover that a human skull in a gutter downspout has caused the damage. Annie is also intrigued by the self-assured young man who comes to repair it.Step by step, she learns to navigate town politics and human nature to figure out how the skull got there-and whose it is. This cross of Agatha Christie and Jane Austen takes us back to World War II and Ginny's life before returning to Annie's, revealing the complex and unexpected family relationships in the small town that lie hidden in the secret of the skull.