Longing to end a quarrel which has lasted for twenty years, Utah sisters Gayle and Caroline Mackenzie plan a joyful reunion in Caroline's New Mexico home. But Caroline, who has just become the third wife of a fundamental Mormon polygamist, doesn't show. Disillusioned and angry, Gayle searches for whys and finds a strange tale of religious conversion in journals her sister left behind. And when the family claims their new and wealthy member disappeared in a storm on her wedding night, Gayle is caught in a web of deceit spun by Navajo spirits of the dead. After a treacherous attack which spills her blood in the red desert sand of the mesa, deceptions unravel in an ancient rite of blood atonement as the fundamentalist family suffer celestial consequences for old sins buried way too long.