The "Red Rose Girls"--Violet Oakley, Jessie Willcox Smith, and Elizabeth Shippen Green--were not the only female artists to live at Cogslea. Caitlin, an artist, is housesitting at Cogslea when she finds herself on a quest to unlock secrets from the past. Eager to help in the adventure are Toby, an imaginative twelve year old; Maggie, the cleaning woman who talks to ghosts; and Caitlin's African wild dog, Malindi, who dreams in parables. But Caitlin will tell no one, not even her husband, Sam, of the radical method she will use to step through the portal of time to solve a three hundred year old mystery.