Carving from memory the ground she will stand on, Rennie England returns to the family home in Idaho in time to see her father's body being carried out his fire-blackened bedroom window. Her journey to find out what happened will take her to his bedroom, to a candle in the room and a key in the lock, to other rooms where people fell in love, where people died. As she asks who was locked in and who was locked out, she hears in a new way the voices of her life--the father who hangs his twins, but not by the neck; the grandmother, whose light comes with cinnamon and salt; the lover, who is the one right thing and out of reach even before he is assassinated. Rennie is learning what we get to keep and what we don't get to keep, what we want to know and what we can't let ourselves know, what we love and what we unwittingly betray.