When her elderly parents are killed in a car accident back home in Ontario, Kate Smithers recalls a motivational speaker’s definition of crisis: opportunity riding on the winds (or was it wings?) of a storm. Duly motivated, and fed up with the frigid climate and overweening nouveau riche that bedevil her prairie city, the under-employed ex-English major chucks an antiseptic existence in boomtown to return to the gritty familiarity of hometown. Living back in her parents’ crumbling house, more middle aged than not, Kate keeps body and soul together by opening a grave-tending business. But Kate gets more than she bargained for. And not in the way of business. With a host of puzzling characters shooting up like lilac suckers, Kate is prompted to delve beneath the town’s surface and soon becomes entangled in some very messy roots. A little murder. A little mayhem. A little magic. And a great gaping hole of a mystery — which concerns Kate herself.