After five months of teaching in Alaska, Lydia Falkner is back in the Yukon Territory. She is anxious to return to her beloved wilderness cabin. The salmon are running, the bears are afoot, and the fireweed is in bloom. Lydia longs to embrace it all. But, at the request of Teddy an old and dear friend, she will first visit a salmon research project on the Yukon River. The researchers share a camp with a group of mushroom pickers, a diverse and interesting group. Lydia befriends a small boy and together they wait for Teddy to return to camp. Teddy never arrives. A search ensues and it is not until evening that the body is discovered at a hundred year old mining site. It is murder. There are no clues and no obvious motives. Was Teddy assaulted by one of the mushroom hunters? by the archeologist who lives at the mining site? by the placer miners who live nearby in the woods?
Lydia is obsessed by Teddy's death and travels the Territory searching for information. Three more bodies are discovered in very different environments, under very different circumstances. There is no obvious connection between these four deaths and yet one name keeps surfacing. As the summer wears on, more details emerge but none of them are illuminating until an astonishing answer comes from an astonishing source. This revelation nearly costs Lydia her life.
