Two weeks after Virginia Kate received her grandmother's journal in the mail and an urgent letter from her mother asking her to come home, she received the phone call from her uncle with news of her mother's death. Filled with remorse and carrying the journal, Virginia Kate heads back to the Appalachian hollow where she was born--the place she had hoped never to see again. The daughter of a mountain wild child and a Shakespeare-quoting salesman, Virginia Kate relives her turbulent childhood and the pain of her mother's betrayals. Haunted by ghosts and family secrets, she struggles to reconcile three generations.