As a child, Kate Stong Smythe drew castles. Now, at thirty-five, she’s found herself
hard-edged and uncompromising, designing slick condos in Griffintown, a gentrified
working-class neighbourhood of Montreal.
When Kate’s mother dies, she calls out five mysterious names from her deathbed, propelling
Kate on a journey to unravel the mysterious dreams she’s had since childhood. She’s met with
a shock when she finds their names in her own family genealogy books, tied to faces she knows from her strange flashbacks. Who are these women, and why have they haunted her
dreams since she was a little girl?
Kate’s unsettling visions take her from her home in Montreal to an abandoned farmhouse in
the northern suburbs of Toronto, increasingly consumed by her ties to the past and the
ancestral hardness that is holding her hostage.