Before Jami Riggs learns—the day of her mother’s funeral—that she is inheriting a collapsing 19th-century inn at the southernmost tip of Charleston, South Carolina, she’d never intended to live outside the Appalachian mountains or to speak to her long-estranged father ever again. Knowing nothing of inn-keeping or of This Old House renovations and still in the midst of graduate studies in history, Jami sees no point in accepting the gift—which, it quickly appears, comes with all sorts of secrets and strings attached. But when old family friend Shelby Lenoir Maynard, back briefly on Pisgah Ridge for the funeral, offers to travel down to the Carolina Low Country with her, Jami surprises herself at how quickly she falls for Charleston’s charm and its quirky, colorful people. As she struggles to bring the inn—and her own life—back from rot and neglect, Jami stumbles on a series of disturbing discoveries, including a possible murder. When more “accidents” begin to occur, including the disappearance of an African-American toddler in whom a wealthy white matriarch has taken a peculiar interest, Jami suspects she has at her history-savvy fingertips old stories with new clues to the truth. If only she can sort out the bad guys from the good.