Loni Mae Murrows life as a bird artist at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC is tidy, if a trifle constraineduntil shes abruptly summoned back home to the wetlands of northern Florida, where she grew up. Her mother, critical and difficult, has grown frail and been resentfully consigned to assisted living, and her younger brother, Phil, juggling a job, a wife, and two young children, needs her help. Loni may not be her mothers only child, but there are some things only a daughter can do. Going through her mothers things when she returns, Loni finds a cryptic note from a woman whose name she doesnt recognize: There are some things I have to tell you about Boyds death, it reads. Boyd is her father, a man who drowned in a boating accident out on the marsh when Loni was twelve and Phil just a baby. The circumstances of his death, long presumed a suicide, turn out to be murkier than anyone thought. Against her better judgment, she finds herself drawn into a dangerous quest to discover the truth about how he died, struggling all the while to reconnect with her mother through the remnants of their past and to reconcile with her brother and his pushy, provincial wife. At last moved to avenge the wrongs done to her family, Loni has to decide whether to join the violence or end it.
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