As winter comes to Sheriff Ray Elkins’s northern Michigan county, he must solve a series of perplexing crimes, including the murder of a woman whose roots reach back to a mysterious commune…

In the depths of winter, Cedar County is on occasion literally frozen in place. Roads are impassable; the area schools are closed for days at a time. And the bad guys and gals, they’re hunkered down like everyone else until the weather breaks. But this winter isn’t the usual. There’s arson and murder. The iniquities of some particularly unsavory ancestors are being visited upon the current generation.