After postponing a career in journalism to raise her two children, Angie Stephens receives an assignment from a national magazine and sets out to make the most of a long-sought opportunity. Eager and excited, she anticipates researching and writing a feel-good tourism article about Whispering Pines' winter festival. What she doesn't anticipate is beginning her first working day by arriving in upstate New York during a blizzard, and ending the day by stumbling over a dead body. Caught up in what the police quickly classify as a murder and fueled by her enthusiasm to practice her dormant investigative skills, Angie hooks up with George Satterfield, a good-looking, quixotic man. Their fragile alliance is threatened by Angie's disturbing knowledge of George's proximity, in time and place, to the victim and murder scene. Having helped solve a murder during a weekend trip with her college-age daughter a few months earlier, Angie hopes lessons learned will spur her success.