Tucker Stevens returns home--a tiny, failing mining town--as head of a revitalization project to turn the place into a living history tourist attraction. Late one night, she finds herself in front of The St. Charles Saloon, dazed and disoriented, with no recollection of her last nine hours and no idea why she keeps hearing the word "forget."
After settling into her rented house on Yankee Hill Road, Leah Hudson has made a few friends and loves her job as the high school librarian in Portero. She's never met her absent landlord until the day Tucker shows up on her doorstep with assurances that she won't have to move now that Tucker's back in town. During that encounter, with the sparks of their mutual attraction flying, Leah decides to ignore Tucker's reluctance and takes matters into her own hands.
As the two women grow closer, Tucker struggles to make sense of the strange incidents going on all around her, and she embarks on a journey to find the answers to a missing padlock key, a possible kidnapping, and what her memories of a bartender from the Old West with a vendetta on her life mean. If Tucker doesn't succeed in fitting all the pieces together quickly in this tangled tale of secrets and trickery, she might lose the two things she has come to hold most dear--Leah and her sanity.