Concord, Massachusetts, is littered with literary monuments, of which the historic Ames house is only a minor one. But to Susan Ames, nowhere on earth is more important than this colonial residence where Emerson and Thoreau once broke bread with her ancestors. Dying of cancer, Susan knows the house should stay in her family, but the only heir is her daughter, Mary Ellen, a wild child more likely to indulge in cocaine and motorcycles than transcendental poetry. Eleven years ago, she ran off with her college professor, and will need to be located before she can inherit the estate.

Finding her falls to Brady Coyne, a good-hearted Boston attorney who knows his way around New England's dark parts. He will soon find that Mary Ellen's story is too tragic even for a great poet to contemplate.