Adrift in New York City with no money, no job, and no prospects, a young woman's fortunes change overnight when a supposed uncle she has never met arrives to whisk her away to a strange household full of dark secrets. The relatives who welcome her seem kind enough on the surface, but beneath the warmth lies an atmosphere of menace she cannot quite name.

As she settles into her new life, odd events accumulate-a forbidden room, unexplained disappearances, whispered confidences that contradict one another. Someone in the house is concealing a terrible truth, and the young woman begins to realize that her arrival was no accident. The danger closing around her is intimate and familiar, the most difficult kind to escape.