Spoiler-free synopsis of Golden Mountain (needs polishing)
Maggie, a young woman entering adulthood, moves cross-country to her aunt’s farm in Tennessee when she decides a change of scenery will help fight her lifetime battle with depression.
Despite her determination to get her life in order first, she falls in love with Will, a local boy a few years her senior.
The family farm was her grandfather’s greatest passion, second only to his wife. Her death left him a broken man who spent his last days on the farm in the care of his youngest daughter, who lives there still. Echoes of his presence still linger around the old farmhouse, and Maggie finds the whispers and footsteps are a comfort instead of a fear.
As she learns the details of her grandparents' lives, she begins to see alarming similarities between herself and her grandmother. Even her relationship with Will seems to mimic the doomed love story that took place on the family farm before she was even born.
Maggie is inexplicably drawn to the old house at the back of the farm that once belonged to her newlywed grandparents. With her aunt’s blessing, she begins to restore the house and make it her home.
She becomes deeply entwined in the dark secrets surrounding her grandmother’s death, following the soft guidance of her grandfather’s spirit. Will is increasingly concerned about her obsession with the past, and is gnawed at by growing doubts about their future together.
Summer fades into fall, and the seasonal surge in her depression is dangerously close at hand. Isolated in the little house, ostracized by the small town and struggling with self-destructive instincts, Maggie begins a desperate search for the one thing, the catalyst that triggered her grandmother’s death, in the hope that the knowledge can save her life.
Book one is complicated by the attraction another boy from town feels for Maggie. They have a great deal in common, much more than they can see in the beginning. When he discovers her relationship with Will, his jealousy becomes a deadly threat. Maggie's unseen link to him makes her the only one who can see the logic behind his actions, and her empathy only spurs him on.
