The Wallers settled into a middle-class lifestyle in suburban Charlotte, North Carolina. Carl, working as an assistant treasurer for Bank of America and Alicia, taking time off from teaching third grade to raise their son, Andy. One day Alicia walks into the living room carrying a certified letter from a lawyer, inviting Carl to the reading of a will for his uncle George Michael Waller. Carl, who’s dad died when he was very young, never knew he had an uncle or heard his mother talk about the Waller family. The couple arrive in the little village of Hinsdale and discover that his uncle died under suspicious circumstances and the entire Waller extended family has vanished. The young family enters a culture of murder, corruption, and tyranny, unimagimable for a small rural town in northern New York, located on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, the natural border with Canada.