27-year-old Daphne Barlow escapes her parents’ ruthless expectations as the heir to their Fortune 10 organic food brand and finds a different kind of ruthlessness—the remote town of Sierra Ridge in the inhospitable Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California.With a new PhD under her belt and eager to avoid her pre-determined path at the company named for her, Daphne seeks out an idyllic Mayberry existence in a small town where residents might appreciate her personal brand of homeopathic techniques and herbal cures. While she manages to gain a small collection of clients, she is mostly met with cold skepticism from the locals. When her favorite client—John Sharpe, an army veteran in his 70s—goes missing and no one in the town seems to be care, Daphne is deeply concerned. He saved her life once and she is bound and determined to return the favor.Pitting herself against the townspeople, who assure her that Sharpe is just on a bender despite all the evidence she finds to the contrary, Daphne is drawn deeper and deeper into trouble, all while a wildfire rages closer and closer to the town.It seems as if a local biker and a civilian deputy sheriff are willing to help, but the first could be hero or villain and the second winds up dead on Main Street. She’s told to leave her search for the truth alone by multiple people, and still she persists. Then her house is ransacked and a knife is held to her throat with a clear warning to be gone by the next morning. But the wildfire has finally arrived and she cannot find any place that’s safe.