Vancouver, 1959. Margaret Spencer has finally left her dull and pompous lawyer husband, Harry. She now lives alone in a basement apartment, happy in her job as assistant to detective Nat Southby - whom she also has taken as her lover. But Maggie still is harassed by Harry and their daughter Elizabeth. She decides to head north to the Cariboo District for a week of peace on a dude ranch. As the whistle-stop train takes our heroine from Vancouver through the picturesque towns of Squamish, Whistler and Lillooet en route to Williams Lake, ever further from civilisation, she is drawn ever closer to a new mystery - a husband gone missing and a series of murders whose roots go back a decade.