Jessica Stearne, though happy in her chosen profession has a true passion for history, the only medium by which she is able to experience romantic flights of fancy. Her elegant apartment in a part of what was once an imposing Georgian residence, later a Victorian prison, overlooks an ancient but magnificent oak tree. While compelled to climb the oak tree one day to rescue her cat, Jessica discovers a message cut into the bark dated1820 by a man sentenced for the gruesome murder of a young woman and for which he was subsequently executed. Jessica, driven by curiousity proceeds to investigate....