Haunted by her dreams, Mary Russell arrives in San Francisco in 1924 to settle her parents' estate. But she quickly encounters a few surprises and learns there may be a great deal more to her childhood in this city than she ever knew. As Mary tries to cobble the pieces of her shadowy past together, her husband Holmes wonders if she may be repressing vital memories. And one thing seems certain--someone wants Mary's remembrances to stay buried.

Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes are on their way from Bombay to San Francisco to settle some legal affairs related to Mary's inheritance of her family's estate. Approaching port, Mary becomes afflicted with troubling dreams and irrational behavior. Mary was six years old when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake occurred, but she denies having any memory of that time. She was also the only survivor of an automobile "accident" in 1914. As questions are asked, more family members seemed to have died in violent, unexplained ways. Aided by a hard-boiled crime writer named Dashiell Hammett, Russell and Holmes attempt to discover why Mary is targeted for assassination.

"En route to San Francisco to settle her family's estate, Mary Russell, in the company of husband Sherlock Holmes, falls prey to troubling dreams--and even more troubling behavior. In 1906, when Mary was six, the city was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake. For years, Mary has insisted she lived elsewhere at the time. But Holmes knows better. Soon it is clear that whatever unpleasantness Mary wanted to forget hasn't forgotten her. A series of mysterious deaths leads Mary and Holmes from the winding streets of Chinatown to the unspoken secrets of a parent's marriage and the tragic 'accident' that Mary alone survived. What Mary discovers is that even a forgotten past never dies ... and it can kill again."--Page 4 of cover.