Shelley Anderson wants her college diploma to be the escape ticket away from Bishop Hill, a former Midwestern Swedish communal society. A reckless driver sends Shelley off the road and into the mysterious past of folk artist Olof Krans. Drafted into finding Krans's last painting, her only clues are: an old woman's dreams and an uncle's guilty conscience.

Shelley pounds the brick sidewalks of Bishop Hill as she navigates between museums and restaurants trying to determine if the old woman's cloud-inspired dreams of Krans's 1915...