The universe of twelve-year-old cellist Gabriela Vadillo has been turned up side down. Just as her desperate family struggles with the foreclosure of their San Diego home, an astonishing letter arrives that propels her, her mother and wounded, veteran father to their only remaining refuge - a farm in the lowcountry of South Carolina. And, when fate thrusts her into an encounter with aging master falconer, Herman Finch and his red tailed hawks, her challenges are only beginning. Old secrets will test the future, new enemies will threaten the present and everything Gabriela believes about herself and the world around her will never be the same.