Once, Hannah Manning was an internationally-renowned journalist and war correspondent. Today, she's a woman suffering from a traumatic brain injury. Unable to concentrate, in pain, and haunted by her memories, Hannah goes to her sister's small vegetable farm in Prince Edward County, Ontario, to recover. There she finds comfort in the soft rolling hills and neat fields as well as friendship in the company of Hila Popalzai, an Afghan woman also traumatized by war. Struggling to read the printed word, Hannah retreats into the attic and finds 200-year-old letters about the original settlers, Loyalist refugees from the American Revolution in 1784. The letters lead Hannah to a root cellar beneath the old house where she experiences visions of a woman emerging from the icy cold mist. Is the woman real? Or the product of a severely damaged brain?

Then Hila disappears. When Hannah cannot account for her time, not even to herself, old enemies begin to circle. Soon past and present merge into a terrifying threat to the only thing Hannah still holds dear—her ten-year-old niece Lily.