Torie O'Shea investigates the tangled roots of an ancient family tree.

Torie O'Shea-- genealogist and amateur sleuth-- is having a killer of a day. The town gossip spreads the word that her sweet wheelchair-bound mother is having an affair-- with the sheriff Then quiet Marie Dijon is found dead at the foot of her basement stairs. Did she fall? Was she pushed? All Torie knows is that Marie had a family tree with royal roots completely foreign to a folksy Middle America town like New Kassel, Missouri. As foreign as, say...murder.

But nosiness in New Kassel is as native as the...