A blizzard shuts down the Rhode Island coast, and at the legendary Ocean House the painter Maddie Morrison has taken refuge from a bitter divorce. Hours later her body is found in the snow, and her small daughter CeCe is gone without a trace.
Detective Conor Reid catches the case, working alongside his brother Tom of the Coast Guard and Maddie's shattered sister Hadley. The storm traps suspects and investigators alike, and the closed circle of Maddie's life, her marriage, her money, her friendships, starts to reveal how many people had reason to want her out of the way.
Luanne Rice writes the mystery through a family's grief rather than around it, giving the police work an emotional weight and the wintry Rhode Island coast a bleak, beautiful presence of its own.