"Hills' latest John McIntire adventure is dark, dense, and delicious—and musn't be rushed."—Booklist STARRED review

January, 1951: America is in the grip of war in Korea, the threat of nuclear annihilation looms, and Senator Joe McCarthy has begun his Red Scare. But the residents of St. Adele, Michigan, are more concerned with staying warm and shoveling snow until a bizarre ice storm brings down a towering pine. Entangled in its roots is evidence that leads Constable John McIntire to the abandoned farmstead of a young Finnish-American couple who had supposedly left the community years before to help build a workers' Utopia in the Soviet republic of Karelia. There he discovers two bodies, buried sixteen years in an unused cistern.

In his zeal to uncover the truth, McIntire brings the scrutiny—and the suspicion—of a Red-hunting government agent upon his neighbors and himself. Then a part of the past he hoped to bury forever threatens to destroy his new life.