When the women in the Sparrow family reach thirteen, they develop a unique ability. In young Stella's case, she is able to see a person's probable future. When she foresees a gruesome murder, she tells her father about it - but the murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him. Stella has to hide out with her grandmother Elinor, who lives alone by a lake where Rebecca Sparrow, a washergirl with a deadly gift, was drowned three hundred years before. In Unity, Massachusetts, the same prejudices and mistakes are recyled over generations. Stella herself brings light to this closed world, but the dark thread of the past meets the sinister trail of contemporary murder.