The irrepressible Charlee runs off to Las Vegas to marry the handsome Scottish horse breeder, Ian. They return to Ian's Appaloosa ranch in the forested mountains near Pineville, Montana, and begin life together, but it's not the uninterrupted bliss Charlee had imagined. As Charlee struggles to integrate herself into Ian's world, things get complicated when she encounters the ghost of Ian's father. He may be only her imagination, but Daniel raises questions about the death of Ian's first wife when he discloses family secrets. When Charlee discovers a hidden box of counterfeit money, she's drawn into a web of intrigue that stretches far beyond the little ranch. Whatever the answers, Charlee isn't going to let things like forest fires and accidents derail her from finding out the truth, and she's not going to tell Ian until she knows for sure. Calamities may test true love and the bulwark of their marriage, but it's what Ian doesn't know about Marybeth's death that threatens to destroy everything.

Charlee is making plans for a cozy mid-life: painting, traveling, getting the kids out of the house. She has even purchased tickets to Scotland, where her grandmother was born, and intends to whisk her husband away for a much needed break from the prosecutor's office. But when someone kills him in a hit and run, her "best laid plans" come to a screeching halt. When the aging local sheriff fails to track down the murderer, Charlee shifts into high gear, energized by the crazy idea she can find the killer on her own. Searching for the culprit is good medicine for her aching heart. She soon discovers that the hoity-toity family of the late Senator Mondragon are less than they seem, and she's caught up in the tendrils of crime creeping through the town of Whitewater like a noxious weed. Before she has uncovered all the answers, her investigation is detoured: she has to take a job teaching art in Snowflake, much further north, where, in a good winter, nobody dies in a blizzard. The upside is that she meets Ian, a handsome Scottish horse breeder. Though she's been single for two years, she's not quite ready for love. However, any man who can play the bagpipes and look that good in a kilt deserves a little attention. Strands of the mystery surrounding the Whitewater prosecutor's death reach Snowflake, where Charlee rents a drafty farmhouse for the winter and manages to survive, with a combination of ingenuity, dumb luck, and duct tape. Summoned back to Whitewater, she has hard choices to make and a real lesson to learn about letting go. Sparkling with humor, this thought-provoking mystery is all about doing hard things, and surviving loss with grace and gusto.

Western women have always been in the forefront of teaching the Baha'i Faith. Here are short pen portraits of seven such women whose services to the Cause of Baha'u'llah have spanned the twentieth century. Emogene Hoagg, Claudia Coles, Anna Kunz, Amelia Collins, Kate Dwyer, Ella Bailey, Ella Quant - some well known, others less so - all devoted their lives to the promotion and development of the Faith they loved.