Gina Gillespie is dead. That's what the invitation to the funeral said, tucked into an envelope next to a prepaid ticket home.

But when Ember returns to the island of Tulukaruk, she finds that things aren't exactly as she remembers them. People are acting strange, and her sister claims she didn't send a death announcement or an invitation to the funeral. Their mother has been dead for several months, having drowned earlier that year. No one called Ember, because her mother wouldn't have wanted her to come.

What's worse, though she won't say how or why, her sister believes that it was murder. She's pegged it on the person Ember would have thought the least capable of such an act: the local bartender and fashion icon that took her in when her mother threw her out--Zinnia Knox.