When her mother dies, Tala returns to her New Hampshire hometown, and violent memories assault her. She struggles against supernatural powers to save her former high-school boyfriend, Matt. Tala stays alone in the family’s bleak house, next door to a cemetery. She finds amulets, macabre newspaper photos, and her grandmother’s diary, all hinting at an animalistic strain, for which a remedy may or may not exist. Can she prevent her enemy, Willis Sharp, from obtaining an amulet, which would increase his power and his danger to Tala and Matt? Can her grandmother’s diary lead her to a man accused of revolting brutality, but the only one who can help her? And will she risk confronting him by traveling through the wilderness of wolf territory?