Meet Morgan Forrester. Spirited and almost wise, she's a counselor and a mother and her life is good. But it isn't right. She aches from the pull of a destiny she senses but can't yet see while ancient fingers, icy and familiar, coil around her spine and a voice whispers that she'll never find her calling.

The Carolina summer sizzles when she hooks up with a Cherokee environmentalist who must stop a nuclear dump and a cranky eccentric searching for her daughter--and their shaky roller coaster lurches forward.

When the enormity of what each...