Intelligent, pretty, and talented, nineteen-year-old Heather Keller appears to have a brilliant future ahead of her-until she is seduced into a Northern California cult. Heather travels the perilous borders between faith, mysticism, devotion, and fanaticism, while confronted with the psychological and political levers designed to tip spirituality into madness. Her mother, with the help of others in her small town, fights back to reclaim her daughter.