Agatha Award Nominee Pat Montella, sick of her office job and looking for any shortcut to early retirement, receives a mysterious summons from a lawyer. A complete stranger--ninety-one-year-old Miss Maggie Shelby of Bell Run, Virginia--intends to bequeath her 200 acre estate to Pat. The catch is, Pat must spend a week there first with Miss Maggie, a retired history teacher who seems determined to make Pat her next star pupil. The past does indeed come alive for Pat, but in ways neither she nor Miss Maggie expect: phantom aromas of Union army chow, sounds of soldiers felling trees...and nightmarish visions of horrific battles. But while Pat delves into the saga of Bell Run and the family who gave their lives to protect it more than a century earlier, she finds, stalking her through the bewitching Virginia woodlands, a much more terrifying present-day murderer...