The star of this Gothic thriller is Ashby House, a magnificent estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains and home to Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore. Ruby, also known as Ruby "Killmore," reigns over Ashby House and neighboring community Tavistock, North Carolina, with benevolence and a lifetime of scandal. Abducted as a toddler in the 1940s and married four times to husbands who died under mysterious circumstances, Ruby's life is shrouded in mystery and intrigue and lots of speculation.
The other residents of Ashby House are a spiteful, jealous bunch. The family name and legacy wield a power that drives them either mad or away. With the childhood kidnapping of Ruby and many marriages and divorces, the line of succession for inheritance of the estate and the vast McTavish fortune are at stake and uncertain. The question of who the "real" McTavishes are supersedes origin of birth and that's where the plotting and scheming come in.
More than 70 years after Ruby's childhood disappearance, her family is together again at the estate to sort out affairs and the ugly truth just keeps getting uglier and uglier. Does Ashby House and its surrounding woods and treacherous terrain hold the secrets to the madness? Must the modern-day McTavishes atone for the sins of their elders? Told in letters and e-mails with flashbacks interspersed with present day action, this family drama is the stuff nightmares are made of.