"A mysterious aunt named Hazel, confined for years in an asylum, arrives bearing with her secrets about the now banished Dakota Indians whom everyone else wants to forget. Their family's relationship with these onetime neighbors and friends has shaped her life, and theirs. Her arrival will propel the story into the past, as far back as the Senger family's initial settlement in and later flight from slave-holding Missouri, a place of superstition and folklore. Interweaving Grimms' Tales, the abolitionist movement, country healers and water-witches, as well as Dakota ethnography and heritage, she tells the story of their epic journey." "Past and present are intertwined in this narrative, as Asa discovers that violence cannot stay buried when the dark history that his family has fought to keep secret is revealed. The past, Asa is about to find out, is as close as his own heartbeat."--BOOK JACKET.