If you found a box of letters written during World War II—would you read them? And what if you did and discovered an amazing story about unrequited love, betrayal, and murder in a small southern town?

A young lawyer meets Emily Hodge, a 75-year-old spinster shunned by her hometown society, and can't understand why she lives such a solitary and seemingly forgotten life. But the letters she leaves for him reveal how her choices caused her to be ostracized—but definitely not forgotten by those who loved her.