Nuala Anne McGrail, a fey, Irish-speaking woman blessed with the gift of second sight, and her husband and accomplice, Dermot Michael Coyne, investigate the brutal beating of Finnbar Burke, the "nice fella" with whom their shy, golden-haired nanny has fallen in love, who is found floating in the Chicago River. Set in late nineteenth-century Chicago.

Becoming suspicious about facts surrounding a tragic vehicular homicide for which a young man blames himself, psychic Nuala Anne McGrail and her husband find the case complicated by a scandal involving the diary of a nineteenth-century priest.