But with her wonderful father's unwavering love, Melody always felt safe -- until a dreadful mine accident ripped her from her family's moorings.

She was still devastated by her father's death when she left West Virginia with Haille to follow her mother's dream of becoming a model or actress. But first they stopped in Cape Cod to visit her father's family at last.

Melody knew only that her grandparents had disowned their son when he married Haille -- just because she was an orphan, her mother said. Yet moments after Melody first laid eyes on dour, Bible-spouting Uncle Jacob, nervous Aunt Sara, and her cousins -- handsome Cary, whose twin, Laura, had been killed recently in a sailing accident, and sweet, deaf little May -- Haille announced that Melody was to live with them.

Sleeping in Laura's old room, Melody was awash in a sea of grief and confusion, with only her beloved fiddle to comfort her. Then Cary revealed the truth he'd gleaned about her parents -- a sad shocking story that only puzzled her more. Melody knew nothing of the dark deceptions that would soon surface...the devastating betrayals she would face before she glimpsed the faint, beckoning lights of a safe harbor....