Everyone is affected by the haunted life of Sally MacLean - her family as well as the lakeside community of Mistik Lake where a tragedy occurred in the winter of her sixteenth year. Now her daughter, seventeen-year-old Odella, struggles towards womanhood and agonizes over the emotional health of her two younger sisters and her father, Daniel. Then she meets Jimmy Tomasson, whose astonishing dreams seems to have led him to her. And, in the heat and tenderness of their deepening feelings, Odella begins to unravel the web of deceit that has wounded them all.