Darkness dawns... Decades ago, Maggie Brandt fled the East Coast - leaving behind her troubled marriage, her three nearly-grown children, and her controlling mother-in-law - and picked up the threads of her old life in her Midwestern hometown. There, she found a measure of peace, even as she regretted leaving her children behind. Now, though, her ex-mother-in-law has been diagnosed with uterine cancer, and demands that Maggie dance attendance on her while she recovers - because, she says, there is no one else. Maggie feels she has no choice but to drop everything and comply. On the way, she stops on a whim at an ancient Native American earthwork, and what she experiences there leaves her reeling. An old woman who may - or may not - be the reincarnation of a Native American spirit charges Maggie with nothing less than Earth's renewal. But first, Maggie must bind the family wounds she created in her darkest hours - and with little more than an ancient turtle effigy as her guide.