Temperance Brennan, like her inventor Kathy Reichs, is an excellent, sexy forensic anthropologist called to solve the toughest situations. But also for Tempe, the finding of a girl’s skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is certainly more than just another assignment. Évangérange, Tempe’s childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Called for the character in the Longfellow poem, Évangéline was the most unique person in Tempe’s eight-year-old world. When Évangéline vanished, Tempe was warned never to search for her, that the lady was ‘harmful.’

Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wanting to know if this skeleton could be the friend she dropped so a long time ago. And what’s the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions on the bone fragments of the youthful girl?

In the mean time, Tempe’s beau, Ryan, investigates some cold instances. Three girls dead. Four lacking. Could the New Brunswick skeleton participate the pattern? As Tempe attracts on the most recent advancements in forensic anthropology to penetrate days gone by, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.