Disgraced journalist turned true-crime writer Frank Corso disappears into the upper Midwest with his photographer (and former lover), Meg Dougherty after a snowstorm and car accident strands them in an abandoned Wisconsin farmhouse. Tearing up the flooring for firewood, Corso uncovers the corpses of a family, merely one set of victims in a killing spree spanning 30 years which will send Frank and Meg from state to state, from an inbred mountain enclave in New Jersey to a nunnery with a murder.