You can't go home again, ' popular wisdom claims, but Merrilee Ingram, singer on hiatus from a concert tour, ignores the warning and returns to her Appalachian hometown. Almost immediately, the campaign to run her out of town begins and quickly escalates from verbal threats to snake drawings to a live Copperhead on her porch. Someone in town has a memory long enough to remember that, as a child, Merrilee was deathly afraid of snakes. Meeting the town's boss and society maven, Merrilee is shocked by the hatred the woman and her daughter display toward her. They, too, ask her to leave. Police Chief Quentin Garner wonders if the threats are rooted in the suspicious death of Merrilee's mother, which a four-year-old Merrilee witnessed. Will she remember what happened before the murderer can strike again