When Victoria and Guy Blakeney-Jones inherit the tiny Cornish island of Trelise, it looks as if they have lucked into an idyll. The sub-tropical Priory gardens - laid out in 1845 on the site of an ancient monastery by Guy's ancestor, the herbalist Joshua Jones - await restoration to their former splendor. As work proceeds, a skeleton with a fractured skull is unearthed in the Sea Garden. With the help of Trelise's library, letters and diaries, Victoria begins a search for the skeleton's identity. But as she digs deeper into the tormented history of five generations of Joneses, she sheds light on buried secrets: secrets that germinate into a nightmare.