As her father's condition worsens, it's all Emma can do to stay afloat. Recently expelled from medical school, she takes a job as a substitute fifth-grade teacher to get back on her feet and stay close to home. Emma's not exactly up for the challenge, though. The residents of Maple Street have their own agenda, too-they'd like to see Emma live up to her potential as a miracle worker and cure her father. Ever since his recent diagnosis with a rare brain disease, Clive Sterling has been seeing ghosts, including Ernest Harold Baynes, the long-dead naturalist who worked in Corbin Park, and who seems to have some unfinished business in Everton.

Now Emma has come back to Everton to see her dying father, the only person who has kept up the search for Crystal. No one went looking for her the police don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. But Emma has never found the right use for her healing abilities, and they've been on the fritz ever since her childhood best friend, Crystal, fell prey to addiction and disappeared. There's also the town legend that Emma Starling was born with healing hands. It's notable only for Corbin Park, an enormous hunting park, and for Maple Street Cemetery-home to many former residents of Everton.

The Starlings live in Everton, an ordinary enough New Hampshire town.

'A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake.

Unlikely animals a novel annie hartnett