Marcia Iverson is newly wed but newly widowed by a terrorist act. Grieving but still aglow with the memories of a deliriously happy honeymoon, she decides to continue the plan she and Michael shared to return to his boyhood home in a semi-rural Louisiana backwater. Having cut her ties to her apartment and brokerage job in New York City for marriage, she has nowhere else to go, nowhere to practice her profession, and no one but herself to depend on. When she finds that Michael's death has made her heir to Magnolia Manor, a rundown, nearly bankrupt motel, she applies her abilities to restoring the motel to a paying proposition, building a new family, and making new friends. Just as her plans for the Manor begin to succeed, murders on the premises complicate them. Adding the clues that she gathers to those that an attractive local lieutenant of police shares with her, she runs the risk of herself becoming a victim.